


duotype blues

by Spacedog



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Twins, Big Bang Challenge, Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon Temporary Character Death, Civil War Fix-It, Collaboration, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-14 16:46:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacedog/pseuds/Spacedog
Summary: steven grant rogers does not exist.but steve and grant rogers do.(or, a rogers twins au.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here it is!! the rogers twins au, mine and [katsukrumbs](https://katsukrumbs.tumblr.com/)'s collaboration for the stevebucky au big bang!! they are responsible for the wonderful art of this fic (of which that fantastic header is only a single part!!), and i am responsible for the many words. this idea has been boppin' around in my head for a while, so i'm glad that i was able to bring it to life along with my incredibly-talented artist.
> 
> thank you to [poloniumcat](https://twitter.com/poloniumcat) and [mambo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mambo) for acting as lovely beta readers!! both your feedback helped in make this piece a little less wild.

\---

Even before they entered the world, even before they took their first breaths, born in the shadow of one Great War and following the path of another, it was always _them._ It was always the two of them, even before there _was_ a them.

Sarah Rogers, frail and tiny as she was, was not built to carry one child to term, nonetheless _two._ The woman acting as her midwife—a lovely, round-faced woman from Poland who lived two doors down—told her just as much. One of the twins should have been absorbed by the other one, leaving no trace but a mother’s anecdote, a passing wonder. One of the twins should have been stillborn, a stopped potential, a _maybe_ in exchange for a full future for the other. Whatever the case, both babies shouldn’t have survived to term. But they did.

 _Why_ they did, by _what_ miracle it was that the Rogers family doubled in eight and a half months and a few short hours, was a mystery. Sarah Rogers would later say that the two were so attached to each other that neither would let the other go. Deep inside, she would tell herself it was the last dying gift from the late Joseph Rogers, who, on the same day, across an ocean, choked to death in a trench in a town he’d never heard of.

Maybe the twins’ survival was owed to one of those things. Maybe it was both of those things. Or maybe it was just luck, the kind of dumb luck the twins would survive on for a century and change.

Whatever the reason, on a blistering July evening, as the smoke from Independence Day fireworks turned the tenements hazy, Steve Rogers was born, all three pounds and one and a half ounces of him screaming. Four minutes later, Grant Rogers was born, just as small, and just as loud.

And from then on, it would always, forever, be _them._  

\---

Their childhood, those earliest years of Steve and Grant Rogers, of _them,_ are the hardest. It’s hard for the whole Rogers family. Sarah tries—she wants to be the best mother to Steve and Grant, to her two little miracles—but raising sick twins on her own is near-impossible, when she’s so prone to sickness, herself. Between her fainting spells, Steve’s weak lungs, Grant’s weak heart, and everything else that ails the surviving Rogers family in between, Sarah Rogers finds herself overwhelmed by a world too big and too tough to navigate on her own.

But luckily for Sarah, she doesn’t have to. The people living around her—people just as uprooted from their homes as she—come to her aid, and without asking for much, if anything, in return. The old woman who acted as midwife is more than happy to act as babysitter, in exchange for Sarah’s limited formal medical expertise. The family down the hall are happy to trade old hand-me-downs for a simple batch of potato leek soup. The butcher and grocer, even, give Sarah a little bit extra, every now and then, when she’s not looking, of course. Raising a child might have taken a village, but raising two sickly Rogers boys took all of Brooklyn. The Rogers twins were very, very sick, but very, very loved, and just as much children of New York City as they were of Sarah Rogers.

And being children of New York City, Steve and Grant Rogers, even as they spent more days in bed than out of it, turned out to be sharp, attentive, and smart as hell. Steve and Grant Rogers may have been very sickly, but it quickly became clear that they were also very tough, very attentive, and very, _very_ clever. 

Being raised by many people from many, many home countries meant that the Rogers twins were immersed by more languages in their first five years than most people encounter in their entire lifetimes. Being sharp as they are, Steve and Grant internalize those languages quickly. Soon, the two of them eventually come up with their own dialect, of sorts: a seamless mix of English and Gaelic, at first, a pidgin borne out of their mother’s mother tongue. As they begin to prepare to start school, Steve and Grant’s language becomes more complex, incorporating more words and turns of phrase, as encounter them, and as necessary. Polish diminutives from their sometimes-babysitter, Italian names for fruits and vegetables from the grocer, Yiddish from the Kosher butcher and his apprentice. Even later still, as their health gets marginally better, and they get more rambunctious, their pidgin gets more mature, incorporating their first swears—Russian ones, learned from the older boy down the hall, all for the sake of being able to swear in front of their mother without getting caught.

And once they finally start school, that language of theirs—secret, adaptive, and made up of many moving, ever-shifting component parts—becomes another tool, another neighborhood gift, one that becomes crucial for their combined survival. 

\---

Starting at a new school is hard. Starting at a new school as _twins_ is even harder. Starting at a new school as _sickly twins,_ with a _unique twin language,_ makes Steve and Grant perfect targets for every school bully on the block.

But if Steve and Grant Rogers were _anything,_ they were tough. They were hardy, even though they might have been physically quite fragile. In other words, Steve and Grant Rogers were scrappers, down to the bone. And no bully—whether playing in the schoolyard or teaching in the classroom—would ever expect what was coming to them: the Rogers Twins fought back, and they fought back _hard._

Between them, Steve and Grant Rogers’ first week at PS 616 results in four and a half fistfights, three scraped knees, two paddlings, one nosebleed, a combined trip to the principal’s office, and one very, very exhausted Sarah Rogers trying to explain to them, in Gaelic, the importance of picking their battles. Despite all that, Steve and Grant were already convinced that they were doing right, and nothing short of a reorganizing of the world itself could stop them. No punitive force on earth—not the paddling, not the stern talking-to from school administration, not even Sarah Rogers’ at-wits-end lecture—could override Steve and Grant’s combined sense of _fight,_ especially not when they could sense, subtle as it was, their mother’s barely-suppressed pride at her sons standing up for what they felt was right.

And they quickly become very, very unpopular for it. Sure, they weren’t totally isolated, and they would get nervous thank-yous from the kids they stood up for, when no one else was looking. And sure, the curly-haired boy at the front of the classroom would say hello to them whenever he would pass by their stoop. But they didn’t have _friends._ No, in the politics of the playground, they were pariahs. They, a skin-and-bones pair of twins with their own odd little language would have been strange _enough._ The fact that the two of them seemed incapable and unwilling to _learn their place_ just sealed it.

Luckily for them, it wouldn’t be just the two of them forever.

\---

It’s during a fight that Steve Rogers’ life changes dramatically. Though he couldn’t realize it at the time, being ambushed while waiting for Grant—serving _solo_ detention, in yet another one of the administration’s efforts to break them—leads to Steve meeting someone whose life would become so deeply-entangled in his own, that he couldn’t imagine a life without him. It’s during a fight on the schoolyard—one promising to be the worse he’s been in—that Steve meets _him._  

It’s two-against-one, and Steve is doubled over on the ground, having dropped, hard, at the first punch. Later, when he’s older, it’ll take more than a well-placed jab to the solar plexus to knock him out, but he’s smaller, less-experienced. Just as Steve squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth, struggling to force himself upright, he anticipates the sharp, familiar sting of kicks to his bony back. But just as he’s _sure_ he’s about to take a walloping—it doesn’t happen. Instead, he hears a semi-familiar _hey!_ and a meaty-sounding _smack._

Steve doesn’t take the time to be surprised. He doesn’t even look up at who helped him. Instead, he lunges at one of his attacker’s legs, taking him down just as hard as he’d been knocked back. He manages to throw a punch to the kid’s face before the schoolhouse door opens, and the attackers run off, spooked at the prospect of getting in the same sort of trouble with authority that Steve gets into.

“ _Ass,_ ” Steve spits out. He doesn’t even care if he gets detention for cursing. He hurts where he’s been hit, and there are dirt stains on his clothes—stains that he _knows_ his mother will be up late trying to remove. Tears threaten to well up at the unfairness of it all, and he may very well have started crying, if it weren’t for the fact that someone was still there—the very same someone, in fact, who helped him out of the fight in the first place.

“Hey,” that someone says, and Steve looks up and sees the face of this intervening bystander, of this interesting new person.

It’s the boy. The same one who sits in the front of the class, who’s always one of the first to raise his hand whenever the teacher asks a question. The very same boy who says a friendly _hello_ to Steve and Grant whenever he happens to pass by their stoop.

He’s smiling at Steve, that same kind, soft smile. As Steve takes his hand, all he can notice is that this boy—whose name, he could never remember, or maybe never learned—has the brightest, bluest eyes he’s ever seen.

“Are you okay?” the boy asks, helping Steve up from off the sharp concrete. All Steve can do is nod, eyes trained on his, trying—and failing—to find any sign of ill will in this strange new boy’s actions.

“Yeah,” Steve says, carefully. “Thanks.”

The boy nods. “Freddy and Donnie are real jerks. But I gave Donnie a black eye, and he started crying real bad.”

“Don’t mean he’ll leave me or my brother alone,” Steve says, a little bitterly, as he tries to dust the dirt off his clothes.

“You’re—Steve, right?” the boy asks, quickly pivoting, as he begins rustling through his school bag. “Steve Rogers?”

“I—yeah. That’s me.”

“Figured,” the boy says, “I’m Bucky Barnes. Well, James Barnes. But my ma calls me Bucky.”

“Well, thanks, Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky nods, his fluffy curls bouncing as he does. They stand there for a moment, quietly, awkwardly, neither of them really knowing what to say. Steve wasn’t used to kids other than his brother risking their necks for him. He wasn’t used to kids other than his brother acknowledging him at _all._ Just as he’s about to tell Bucky just that, the schoolhouse door opens again, a flood of child delinquents making their way out of detention. Steve perks up, looking for Grant, and the _minute_ they make eye contact, Steve forgets that, though it sometimes _feels_ like he and Grant share a mind, they don’t _actually_ share in each other’s experiences. And so there’s no way that Grant could know that Bucky helped him out. Which becomes very, very clear when Grant starts running towards Bucky, fists swinging.

“Hey!” Grant yells. “You get away from him!”

“No, Grant, it’s okay,” Steve says, practically jumping in front of Bucky to stop Grant from going into full-on attack mode. “This is Bucky. He helped me.”

Bucky smiles at that, beaming. Grant just eyes him, suspiciously, his gaze absolutely _withering._ It seems entirely ineffective on Bucky, who just continues smiling, all friendly and bright, in all the ways that their teacher seemed to love.

“Hi,” Bucky says, holding out his hand for Grant to shake.

“Hi,” Grant replies, curt. He doesn’t shake Grant’s hand. Instead, he turns to Steve, hardly even acknowledging that Bucky exists. “We should go now. I’m hungry.”

“Oh,” Steve says, “Yeah. You’re right. It’s gonna get dark soon.”  

“Hey,” Bucky starts, breaking in, without so much as a second of hesitation. “Can I walk you home? My dad said I had to go straight back to my house after school, but I think we’re close enough that it should be okay.”

Steve glances at Grant, who is too busy sending a withering glare Bucky’s way to notice his brother. With a shrug, Steve nods. It looks like his brother thinks otherwise, but Steve is _pretty_ sure that he won’t regret this decision a block down the road.

“Sure,” he says.

“Just don’t try anything funny,” Grant adds.

Bucky just nods at that. Steve’s sure that he couldn’t get up to any funny business if he _tried._ And, as promised—and somehow, this is surprising to Steve—Bucky doesn’t try anything along their walk home. He doesn’t even try to veer off-course. Instead, he just walks alongside the Rogers boys, excitedly talking about the neighborhood, comic books, his day, as if he’d always been walking home with them. As if it had always been them. Somehow, having Bucky along makes the walk home seem about five minutes shorter—not an insubstantial amount of time, for children their age.

Once they arrive at their stoop, Steve expects to part with Bucky there, but he walks up with Grant and Steve, as if he’s coming home, too. Grant is making a face, as if he wants to shove Bucky down the stairs, but Steve doesn’t mind Bucky. Not one bit.

Eventually, they get to their apartment, and despite everything, Steve feels disappointed, not because he’s home, but because he’ll have to see Bucky go. Grant knocks on the door, hard, rapping his bony knuckles on the wood until their mother opens the door. Before she can open her mouth, he ducks behind her, making his way into their apartment as quickly as he can.

“Oh,” Sarah Rogers says, clearly sensing Grant’s mood. “Well.”

“I should go home now,” Bucky says, either ignoring—or not picking up—on Grant’s clear distaste for him. “Bye, Grant! Bye, Steve! See you tomorrow!”

“Bye,” Steve says, waving at Bucky as he goes. “See you tomorrow.”

Sarah Rogers closes the door, gently, as she leads Steve into the apartment. “And who was that?”

“Some kid,” Grant says with a shrug. Sarah checks his knuckles, first the left hand, then the right, front and back, before moving onto Steve’s. It was a regular after-school routine, now that the Rogers boys had a _reputation._

“And what was _some kid’s_ name?”

“Bucky,” Steve answers, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could catch a glimpse of Bucky walking home, if he tried _really_ hard. “His name is Bucky.”

\---

“I got you something,” Bucky says during lunchtime the next day, plopping down in the seat next to Steve’s, his ever-fluffy curls bouncing as he does. Beside him, Steve can feel his twin brother bristling.

“Me?” Steve asks, cautiously—though not as cautious as Grant, who is glaring daggers at Bucky in between bites of that day’s lunch.

“Well, yes and no,” responds Bucky, seemingly oblivious of Grant’s chilly welcome. “I have something for both of you.”  

“Oh,” Steve says, no less flattered. No one his age ever got him anything before. Everything he’d ever got always came from grown-ups, or, sometimes, from the teenagers living in his building. It gave him a strange feeling, getting something from someone he went to school with. “What’d you get us?”

“Here,” says Bucky, producing two exciting-looking comic books out from his tin lunch pail. They’re slightly rumpled from being fit into the pail, and dog-eared in some spots, but Bucky handles them with such care that Steve is almost afraid to take them from him.

“I—” Steve starts, unsure as to what to say. “You want us to have this?”

Bucky nods. Steve is mesmerized by the way his curls bounce. “Uh-huh.”

“Forever?”

“If you want,” Bucky answers, with a little shrug.

“I—” Steve starts, “But I don’t have a comic book for you.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says, “I can get another one next week, probably.”

“Thank you, Bucky,” Steve says.  

“Pssh. It’s nothing. You’re my friends!”

Bucky considered Steve his _friend._

Wasn’t _that_ something. 

\---

Back home that day, Steve pores through the comic Bucky gave him in no time. The storyline flies over Steve’s head, but that’s not what he’s interested in. No, thes the art—the lines, the expressions of each of the characters, the fanciful designs of the alien planet it takes place on—that’s what draws Steve in more than anything. He can’t get enough of it, and soon enough, he’s enviously eyeing the printed cover poking out of Grant’s bag.

“Can I read your comic?” Steve asks, carefully, carefully putting his own comic book under his pillow.  

“You can keep it,” Grant huffs, without looking up from his multiplication charts.  

Steve blinks. Grant was never one to turn down a book, no matter what it was about. Comic books shouldn’t have been any different. “Why?”

Grant sighs, switching to their burgeoning twin-language seamlessly. “ _I don’t like comics, and I don’t like Bucky. He’s weird._ ”

“ _He’s not weird, he’s neat,”_ Steve says, “ _Besides, it’s not like we have any other friends._ ”

Grant slams his pencil down, turning his whole, tiny body to look Steve in the eye.

“We don’t need other friends, Steve,” Grant says, in that Brooklyn-accented English of theirs. “We have each other.”

Steve huffs, but even in his frustration, he can tell—vaguely, at least—that Grant is coming from a place of hurt. “You can have two friends, Grant.”

"Whatever," Grant mumbles.

"Yeah, whatever yourself," Steve grumbles back, taking out his precious few sticks of charcoal and getting to work. Grant might not have appreciated Bucky, but Steve did. And he was gonna do what he could to show it.

The next day at lunch, Steve drags Grant with him over to the spot where Bucky is sitting. He, too, surprisingly, sits alone. That surprises Steve. Bucky seemed like he was friendly with everyone. Or, at the very least, that he wanted to be friendly with everyone. Seeing him alone, even if he looked content, made something feel strange, to Steve.

“Hi,” Steve says, smiling at Bucky. That earns him a toothy grin back. Behind him, Steve can _feel_ his brother frowning.

“Hi,” Bucky says, putting down his book.

Steve manages a smile at him. It’s weird, having someone to _smile_ at. “I drew you something.”

Bucky blinks, his big, blue eyes making him look like a funny sort of owl. “Huh?”

Carefully, Steve slides his drawing over to Bucky. He wasn’t ashamed of his skill, but there was something about giving Bucky the drawing that made him feel funny. Bucky, on the other hand, nearly jumps out of his seat with excitement upon seeing Steve's drawing. That was a good sign.

“Steve!” Bucky exclaims, “You’re so good at drawing!”

Steve ducks his head, feeling his face warm up a little. "You think?"

"Yeah!" Bucky exclaims, completely, unabashedly earnestly.

"Well, thanks, Bucky," Steve says, half-mumbling. It's so strange, having someone other than his mother and brother so enthusiastic, so proud, of him. Steve can feel Grant frowning behind him, but for the time being, all he can think of is that bright, toothy grin, and how wonderful it feels to be so appreciated by Bucky.

\---

Steve finds himself enamored by Bucky, endlessly charmed by his boundless positivity and long-winded stories of his Ma, by the softness of his cheeks and the bounce of his curls. Eventually, he starts inviting Bucky over, although Bucky can only stay for a little while, so his dad—who sounded like a scary giant of a man—doesn’t get mad. Though Grant doesn’t budge on his stance on Bucky, Sarah Rogers is just as charmed by Bucky as Steve is, happily welcoming him into her home like he’s one of her own. Outside of Grant’s antipathy towards Bucky, things are going well. Not perfect, of course—Steve and Grant still get in fights, even _with_ Bucky backing them up—but they’re going well. Swimmingly. Close to perfect as the lives of two very, very sickly boys could go.

Which, of course, meant that _something_ had to go wrong.

\---

Winters were hard for the Rogers household. As the temperatures continued to drop, and snow began to fall, Steve knew, deep down, that it was only a matter of time before he and Grant got laid up, sick as dogs, once more. Then, one day, what starts as a sniffle quickly becomes a fever, one that makes Steve and Grant so ill that they can hardly get out of bed, nonetheless go to school.

And Steve hates it. He hates how scared and worried his mother looks, when she thinks that he and Grant are both asleep. He hates how he knows he’s going to fall behind with his schoolwork. He hates how the adults who keep an eye on him when his mother is at work look at them with pity.

He hates how lonely it is, even with Grant.

Luckily, that loneliness is abetted, if only slightly.

On the third day that Steve is too ill for school, he wakes to a gentle rapping on the apartment door. After a few minutes, he realizes that Missus O’Sullivan—the woman down the hall watching them for the day—isn’t answering, and he gets up, despite the way his small body aches, and he carefully, slowly, opens the door, expecting their landlord, or another neighbor.

Instead, standing on the other side of the door, is Bucky, bundled up in a big, ugly, patchwork scarf, and holding a stack of comic books nervously in his hands.

“Steve!” he exclaims, nearly dropping the comics as he does.

“Bucky,” Steve manages, his throat feeling like it’s on fire, as he does. He isn’t even bothered by the fact that Missus O’Sullivan is, seemingly, nowhere to be found. Instead, he just smiles at Bucky, happy to see a friendly face.

“I—I came here to give you your homework, but then I thought that you must be bored, being sat up in bed all day, so I—I got some comics for you,” Bucky starts. Should I be covering my face?”

“Ma doesn’t, so I don’t think we’re contagious,” Steve says, with a shrug. “Come in. Say hi to Grant.”

Bucky nods, following Steve closely. Almost close enough that Steve could forget that he’s sick. Almost. When he gets back to bed, he feels exhausted, and welcomes the stuffy heat of the mattress. Grant, on the other hand, sits up, quick as he can, glaring at Bucky.

“What are _you_ doing here?” he asks, his voice a scratchy-sounding rasp. Bucky tenses, his thick eyebrows furrowing, perhaps, finally, with the realization that maybe— _maybe—_ Grant doesn’t like him.

“I brought your homework. And comics,” Bucky says, holding them up, meekly. Grant opens his mouth to say something, and almost manages something, before he flies into a wheezing, wet-sounding coughing fit. Bucky jumps into to action before Steve could even think to ask, grabbing the pitcher by the twins’ bed and pouring it into a glass, trying very, very hard to be careful. Without spilling a drop, he hands the glass to Grant, who happily takes it, downing its contents in a few big, sloppy gulps.  

“Why are you doing this?” Grant finally manages, once he’s done, “No one asked you to come here.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Bucky asks, taking the glass from Grant’s trembling hands. He fills the glass again, but this time, leaves it on the nightstand. Grant doesn’t seem to appreciate that response.  

Grant frowns, almost looking insulted. “What do you mean, _why wouldn’t you_?”

“You’re my friends,” Bucky says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Something about the way he says it makes Steve feel, if only for a moment, so much better. Something about that simple admission—those three simple words—makes Steve feel, against all odds, _healed._ “So, I—I thought it’d be nice if I could come over after school and help you.”  

And something shifts, instantly, in the way that Grant is looking at Bucky. Steve notices it more clearly than anyone could ever notice it, but Grant, for the first time since they’ve met Bucky, seems to be looking at him as something other than a threat. As something close to a friend.

“I mean—I can go. If you want,” Bucky says meekly, his big, blue eyes shining with the welling of tears. He looks like he’s already ready to run. Steve wouldn’t blame him if he was.

“Buck—” Steve starts.

“No. I—” Grant says, eyes trained on the rag he’d been worrying at. “You can stay.”

“Really?” Bucky asks, his voice sounding small.

“Yeah. Really. I—” Grant starts, and like Steve, like _any_ member of the Rogers family before him, Grant has a hard time swallowing his pride. But he does it. “I’m sorry for being mean to you, Bucky.”  

Bucky nods, and he looks even closer to tears than he did before. Maybe he never let it across, but Steve can now tell, in hindsight, that Bucky was hurt by Grant’s constant cold shoulder. “It’s okay. I understand.”  

“Hey, you!” Missus O’Sullivan says, suddenly coming into the room, a paper bag—ingredients to make her legendarily-bad health tonic, no doubt—in her hands. So that explains where she was. She doesn’t mean to be mean, or, at least, she’s not targeting Bucky. And Steve knows that. But in that moment, even he jolts as her booming voice fills the room. “What are you doing here, huh?”

“I—I—” Bucky starts, eyes going all wide.

“He’s here to give us our homework,” Grant pipes up, his voice still a little hoarse, from his coughing fit. “He’s nice company.”  

“Well,” she says, her voice softening, if only a little. “It’s almost dark. You should go home.”

From the way that he gathers up his things, Steve can tell Bucky doesn’t even _think_ about arguing. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, standing ramrod-straight. He only pauses to turn back to Steve and Grant, briefly, for a goodbye.

“Bye, Bucky,” Steve says. Grant nods, as well, perhaps a way of saying _goodbye_ without having to swallow more of his pride than he already had.  

“Bye, Steve. Bye, Grant. I—uh. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bucky says, as he scurries out, and Steve knows it in his bones, what Bucky shared was not a pleasantry, not a _perhaps,_ but a promise.  

\---

From then, two quickly becomes three. Like a formerly-lost, but key piece to a puzzle, Bucky slots perfectly into place with Steve and Grant. Before long, they’re inseparable. Wherever Steve is, Grant is. Wherever the twins are, Bucky is following close behind, his bouncing curls and considerable difference in size making him reminiscent of a blue-eyed sheepdog, ever-cognizant of his flock. And just like a working dog, Bucky is fiercely defensive of the Rogers boys, never stepping in to start a fight, but always doing what he can to end them.  

Eventually, they meet _Ma Barnes_. She’s a beautiful, soft woman with Bucky’s same heavy eyebrows and soft, springy curls. Physically, she is everything Sarah Rogers is not, but the way she smiles at Steve and Grant, the way she welcomes them into her home, is so kind and open that they might as well be one in the same. Like Sarah Rogers, too, she speaks English with a little lilt, and she and Bucky murmur things back and forth to each other in a language that the Rogers twins do not understand, not yet.

Just as Bucky started spending time in the Rogers household, the Rogers boys start spending more and more time in the Barnes household. Outside of the curtness—sometimes outright hostility—of _Mister Barnes, Sir,_ it’s just as much a home to them as Sarah Rogers’ apartment is. Soon the Rogers twins’ language increasingly incorporates Romanian, gradually though its adoption may be.

And sometimes, though they know it’s all but impossible, they think Bucky can understand what they’re saying, too.

\---

As they get older—taller, by degrees, and scrappier, by miles—Bucky starts coming over more regularly. Sure, they spend time in the loud, exciting Barnes family household every few weeks or so, but Bucky is over like clockwork, almost every day. He begins staying nights—even nights that Steve and Grant aren’t feeling sick. He spends his thirteenth birthday in the Rogers household, even bringing in his own birthday cake and sharing it with a family that he has quickly become a vital part of.

Steve doesn’t understand why, at first, and Bucky never gives him a straight answer. Sometimes, it’s because he can’t get any sleep with the newest Barnes baby, but Steve knows that Bucky loves his youngest sister—Georgeann, after his father—far more than sleep itself. Other times, Bucky says it’s because he’s too tired to walk home, after all the homework he has to do. Not that _that_ makes any sense, given that he lives hardly three blocks away. Eventually, Steve learns the real reason once night, when he overhears Bucky speaking to his mother.

They’re cooking together, as Bucky loved to do. It started off as a joke—Sarah Rogers telling Bucky that he would have to start charging him rent or put him ton work—but it's quickly become a shared treat between the two of them. This time, the conversation starts off as it almost always does, with school-aged pleasantries: Sarah Rogers asking about his day, Bucky excitedly talking about how he’s excited to start chemistry classes, once they’re all high school. From his spot on the couch, Steve can barely hear them, over the noises of the city coming in through the open window. But he _hears them._ Even when Sarah Rogers drops her voice down low and asks how things are doing in the Barnes household. Even when Bucky murmurs that he can’t imagine living there for much longer, not when his dad hasn’t smiled at him for who-knows-how long.

Steve scuttles off to find Grant, and they, in their little language, wonder why Bucky has never shared this with them. Maybe Bucky was ashamed, Grant suggests, but Steve’s sure that isn’t it. Maybe Bucky had told them before, but they hadn’t realized, but Steve _knew_ Bucky, _deeply._ Maybe Bucky is waiting for the right time, is what Grant settles on, finally, and maybe he was, Steve thinks. That has to be it.

Eventually, Bucky _does_ tell them. Not outright, not in the same way he must have told Sarah Rogers. In subtle ways, in half-spoken ways. Ways that could have been easily overlooked, if Steve didn’t know Bucky _so well._

And, in what ways he can, Steve tries to reach out in those same ways, in ways that only Bucky could only ever know, as well.

\---

They carry on like that, with Bucky growing up just as much in the Rogers household as the Rogers boys. The three of them make it to high school—against all odds, Sarah Rogers reminds them—getting in more sidewalk scraps than the three of them can even count. They all begin to find themselves, by degrees—Bucky might have been excited for chemistry, but he really excels in mathematics and physics. Steve fully throws himself into their fine arts program, and Grant, similarly, falls in love with history. Bit by bit, they become _real people,_ even down to growing up.

And Bucky. _Does Bucky grow up._

Steve and Grant are only barely hit by puberty. They get taller, if only slightly, eventually topping out at five-foot-four and not a _smidge_ taller. All Steve notices _really_ changing are his hands: big, gangly things that are better at throwing punches, but are still delicate-boned enough to commit to the fine, delicate work of making art.

But _Bucky._

Puberty doesn’t _really_ come to Bucky until he’s almost seventeen, but when he does, it hits him like a _freight train._ Over the summer, he shoots up to five-foot-nine-and-three-fourths, and, save for his face, all the puppy softness that defined Steve’s childhood best friend all but disappears.   

On top of puberty, Bucky starts working, in earnest, the summer of the twins’ sixteenth year. He’d had odd jobs before: selling papers, delivering groceries, shining shoes—and, one summer, most exciting for Steve and Grant, working concessions at Ebbets Field. But this summer was different. Bucky was working at the docks, now, like seemingly every other young man in Brooklyn.

And now, all of a sudden, _unlike_ every other young man in Brooklyn, Bucky is movie star-handsome _._ And it changes _everything._ Sure, Bucky himself may not have noticed it, but everyone else did. _Especially_ Steve.

Sometime after Bucky begins working at the docks, Steve begins to understand Bucky differently. Something makes Steve feel funny about this new Bucky, a Bucky who, all of a sudden, all the dames seem to have an interest in. Something tickles in the back of Steve’s brain, thinking about the way that Bucky has changed—while, simultaneously, somehow, staying wholly the same, bouncy curls and boundless excitement and all. _Something_ has changed between them, Steve thinks, but he’s not fully sure what. Grant seems to know, but he never tells Steve. Funny how twin brothers worked like that. Luckily for Steve, he figures out his feelings on his own, eventually.

And like almost everything in his life, it comes with a fight.

\---

It’s nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, getting in a fight with Donnie had become almost _banal_ at this point. A bully, a liar, and a brute, Donnie and Steve were practically in a never-ending cycle of escalating scraps. Even as Grant learns to choose his own battles a _little_ more carefully, for Steve, with age comes a newfound sense of stubbornness, a newfound sense of determination, of willing to _fight_. Not that Steve stands much better of a chance, especially now that Donnie towers over him, almost a full half-foot taller and about a hundred pounds heavier. But that wasn’t going to stop Steve from standing up to him. Never did, never would.

So, one day, he gets in a fight with Donnie. About what, it’s not clear. It never is. Not after almost a whole lifetime of antagonisms. He actually manages to take Donnie down for a while, until his weak lungs betray him, and Donnie manages to fling Steve off him like a ragdoll. Steve’s knuckles are cut up and bleeding, and he can feel the spots where bruises are beginning to form on his sides. When he looks up, Donnie is looming dangerously over him, looking worse-for-wear but otherwise _pissed off._ All Steve can do is glower up at him, as he struggles to get back to his feet, grinning a defiant little grin that he _knows_ makes Donnie want to kill him.

Which, luckily, does not happen. Because luckily for Steve—there was Bucky. Like he always was. Wherever the Rogers boys were—wherever _Steve_ would be—Bucky was bound to be close behind. Except now, bigger, stronger, _tougher_ from working the docks, Bucky, sheepdog-loyal, had _bite._

“Hey Donnie!” Bucky yells, already rolling his sleeves up. “What’d I tell you about coming after Steve, huh?”

Donnie turns around, snarling something about _fucking fairies,_ but he doesn’t get much more out beyond that. Bucky clocks him in the jaw, knocking him off-kilter, before grabbing him by the scruff and all but manhandling him into a retreat. Bleeding from the face and facing the prospect of someone who could _actually take him down,_ Donnie stalks off, half-mumbling something about how _lucky_ Steve is that his boyfriend showed up.

Usually, Steve would prickle at that. _Boyfriend._ Bucky wasn’t Steve’s _boyfriend._ But something about the word seemed to stick with Steve, even if it was from _Donnie._

He didn’t have much time to ruminate on that, though. Not when Bucky was helping him up, and, suddenly, looking him over with so, so much care. “God, Steve. He really did a number on you, huh?”

Steve shrugs, feeling a strange fuzziness in his stomach, as they walk together, Bucky wrapping his hand—big, calloused, but somehow, beautiful—around Steve’s shoulder. “Could’ve taken him.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky says, as they make their way back _home,_ back to _Steve’s home._

“Besides, where’d you learn to hit like that, Barnes?” Steve asks.

“Guys at the docks. They’re teaching me how to box. Told me that I’m a natural at it. Maybe I could make some money on the side doing it.”

“Your ma’s not gonna like that,” Steve says, and though he doesn’t say it, _he_ wouldn’t like it, either. Bucky shrugs.

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky says. “But it’s an option.”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that, no matter how much it bothers him. In fact, they stay silent until they’re back in the Rogers apartment, and then, stay quiet even still, so as not to wake Grant—laid up, once again, from a bout of pneumonia.

“Lemme clean you up,” Bucky says, as if he hadn’t already done it so many times before. It’s part of the after-school routine at this point: Steve—and sometimes Grant—gets in a fight. Steve, Bucky, and sometimes Grant walk home. Bucky cleans Steve’s wounds. It’s second nature. There’s a spot next to the window that’s become _the spot._ It shouldn’t make Steve feel so strange, so disoriented, so _grateful,_ but it does.

And as Bucky settles in front of Steve, cleaning and dressing Steve’s wounds with the care of an artist, Steve, feeling so, strangely unsettled on such a regular, average afternoon, blurts out the first thing that he can think of: “You don’t have to do this for me, Buck.”

“Yeah? Well, what if I wanted to?” Bucky asks, a little coy, as he dabs away at Steve’s cuts. “What if this is my idea of a great night out?”

Steve scoffs. “Come on, Buck. You’ve got—you know, a life. You’ve got better things to do. Once we’re outta high school, I mean—you probably will.”  

Bucky blinks, those big, blue eyes of his wide and owl-like. “What do you mean?”

Steve shrugs. “I mean—I’m just saying. You’re not always gonna be around.”

“Stevie,” Bucky sighs, his big, calloused hands cradling Steve’s so, so gently. “I’m _always_ gonna be around, okay? Sometimes I might not be there to help—and as much as I hate it, sometimes, I’ve gotta go straight home, so I can’t be here _immediately—_ but I’m always gonna be around. Always. End of the line. Okay?”  

Steve swallows, his mouth suddenly feeling very, very dry, and his heart suddenly beating very, very fast. Bucky frowns at this, his beautiful, perfect little lips pouted just _so._ He thinks he’s about to have an asthma attack, but somehow, it never comes. Instead, he manages a nod and a single, strangled-sounding, “Yeah.”

Bucky nods. “You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Buck. I—uh. Yeah.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, “You take care, okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, with a sigh. “Yeah, I will.”

Bucky sits there, in front of Steve, silent, for a while. Steve, too, watches him, not knowing what to say, almost _choking_ on his inability to say something. Eventually, Bucky sighs, standing. When he pulls his hands away from Steve’s, there’s an emptiness and Steve wishes he could chase. Wishes he could _ask for._

But he can’t. He knows he can’t. Or, at least—he knows that there’s danger in asking. Bucky, however, does not seem to notice. He does not seem to understand the danger, the excitement, the understanding, that has fully subsumed Steve.

Instead, he just smiles, perfect as always, and waves a friendly goodbye. Carefree as he ever was. “Well, good night, Stevie.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t want him to go. He needs him to leave.

“Good night, Buck,” is all he says. All he _can_ say, as he watches Bucky make his way out.

Steve doesn’t move from that spot next to the window— _their_ spot—for a long, long time. As he remains unsettled, as the day plays through his mind— _fairy, boyfriend, end of the line—_ Steve tries to parse his feelings, the complicated, messy feelings that, suddenly, seemed to have bubbled to the surface of his mind. He doesn’t move from that spot until he figures himself out—and somehow, he does, indeed, _figure himself out._

_And it both terrifies and exhilarates him._

Steve can feel himself trembling as he makes his way back to his and Grant’s shared space. So much happened. Nothing happened. Everything happened. Steve can hardly keep himself together as he barges his way into the space that they claimed as their “room.”

“Hey,” Grant says, rolling over from his spot on the mattress, looking tired, looking ill, but looking like the only person in the world who Steve could possibly tell any of these feelings to. He’s holding a book, though Steve wouldn’t be able to say what its title was for the life of him.  

“Hey,” Steve says, and he leaves it at that, letting the word hang in the air for a long, long time, as he musters up the courage to speak—to tell his brother, his twin, his best friend in the whole wide world, that he’s _figured it all out._

“Well, are you gonna—” Grant starts, but Steve doesn’t let him finish. 

“ _Alright, Asshole,”_ he says, suddenly, sitting on Grant’s mattress and speaking in a sharp, whispered version of their patois. “ _I need you not to tell me that you told me so for one fucking second, okay? This is serious. I—I need to tell you something._ ”

Grant nods, setting his book down without a second glance. “ _What is it, Steve? What’s wrong?”_

At sixteen years old, with his knuckles bloodied and raw and _tingling_ from where Bucky touched them, Steve has a revelation.

“I think—” Steve starts, breathlessly, before switching back into _their_ tongue. “ _I think I’m in love with him._ ”

Something about admitting it, laying everything out on the table, out in the open, has made Steve’s secret so much easier to bear. Instead of feeling ashamed, Steve feels—at least, to whatever degree he can feel—free. He turns to his brother, staring him straight in the face as he does. “ _I think I’m in love with Bucky, Grant. I—I think I’m actually, hand-to-God, in love with him._ ”

The look that Grant gives him—one of gentle amusement and genuine sympathy, all at once—is enough to send Steve to the moon and back.

“I know, Steve,” Grant says, in English, as if he’s humoring Steve. As if the answer was obvious; as if someone could see how much Steve loved Bucky from a mile away. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rating is in anticipation of later chapters. i'll be posting these chapters over the next two days, along with the lovely art from my co-creator. in the meantime, updates will be in the form of posts on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/aka_spacedog) and my [tumblr](http://softpunkbucky.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> here is the [tumblr post for header art](https://katsukrumbs.tumblr.com/post/183397739587/duotype-blues-by-softpunkbucky-ao3-my#notes) and give it a reblog, if you're still on there!!
> 
> next up: kiss me hard (before you go)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the boys of summer (summer heartache, summer heartbreak).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick heads-up for minor character death and brief, vague mentions of verbal abuse. i've also added the tags for those elements, so that people can make informed decisions about this chapter/fic. thank you for understanding, and move forward with however much caution you may need.

Those two years—the two years after finally, finally learning he’s in love with Bucky—could have been the best years of Steve’s life. Finishing high school, coming into adulthood, and beginning lessons at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts, with the added bonus of an ever-fitter Bucky in ever-thinner shirts staying at the Rogers residence until the wee hours of the night—it could have been perfect.

It would have been.

If it weren’t for the fact that Steve and Grant’s mother, their bedrock, their model for _absolute_ _goodness_ , began getting very, very sick.

At first, it’s fatigue. And then it’s a cough. And then it’s wheezing. And, eventually, there’s blood. By the time that she’s admitted to the hospital, Steve and Grant already know what it is. By the time that they test the Rogers twins—both negative, somehow, another little miracle or just sheer dumb luck—Sarah Rogers is barely hanging on.

Steve and Grant hardly see Bucky for a while. When they do, he’s a little quieter, his usual cheer a little more subdued. It's not that he's distant, but he's worn out, like a piece of canvas stretched just a bit too thin. There are bruises that he doesn't talk about, and a pair of boots that look remarkably similar to boxers shoes. Steve tries to pretend the envelopes of cash that he finds stuffed under his pillow are a coincidence. He can’t admit to Bucky just how much he, Grant, and his mother all need it.

But Steve could only admit to himself, only when he's fully alone, that he needs Bucky _,_ just _Bucky,_ even more.

\---

She passes peacefully. At the time of her death, Sarah Rogers was fast asleep. She felt no pain. Or at least, that’s what the nurse says.

Settling Sarah Rogers’ medical debt is almost insurmountable. It’s only after an outpouring of support from their neighbors that Steve and Grant are able to give their mother the funeral she deserves. It’s not a fancy funeral, if there even were such a thing. But it’s well-attended. All the people who the Rogers boys grew up with—all the people who had a hand in raising Steve and Grant—are all mourning with them. Even the Barnes family—the _whole_ family—manages to make it out to say goodbye to her.

Everything that happens between the beginning of the service and putting his mother in the ground is a sad, somber blur. He knows that Grant gave a speech. He knows that he did a reading. He knows that Winifred Barnes sobbed as she said her final goodbyes, and even George Barnes managed to look sympathetic.

He knows that Bucky stood by his side, clenching Steve’s left hand in his, the entire time.

Eventually, they make it back to their apartment before sundown, but only barely. Steve is vaguely aware that he and Grant haven’t eaten all day, but he has a feeling that his brother isn’t hungry. They stand in front of their apartment door, staring at it, knowing that when they cross that threshold, when they make it inside, it will be fundamentally different, even with all their possessions untouched.

Grant is the one to break the silence.

“Well,” he says eventually, sounding like his weak heart was just _barely_ holding on. “She’s gone.”

“She’s with dad,” Steve replies, almost matter-of-factly, though why he responds with that, he doesn’t know. He feels hollowed-out and empty inside, all cried out and weighted with a burden that the world didn’t realize he was far, far too small for.

Another silence. Grant goes to open the door. The sliding of the lock is the loudest noise in the world. As the door swings open, their apartment—their home—feels nothing like it. All three of them, reluctant, remain at the doorway. 

“Welp. I guess I’m going to bed,” Grant says. He wraps his arms around Bucky in a halfhearted hug. Bucky reciprocates, squeezing Grant tightly, as if to squeeze all the hurt and sorrow out in an attempt to dull the pain. “Thanks for coming, Bucky.”

“Yeah. ‘Course,” Bucky replies, with a nod.

Grant goes inside, and for the first time, maybe, Steve is aware of just how very, very small his twin brother is. He watches in silence, until his brother is out of sight, and he lets out a wet, shaky-sounding sigh.  

“Hey, so,” Bucky says, “I was gonna ask—”

“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck,” Steve manages, leaning against the doorframe. It’s the only way he’s going to remain upright. He’s convinced of it.

“Come on, Stevie. I’ve got more than enough space in my room. We can put the couch cushions on the floor, I’m sure Ma has a couple spare blankets, it’ll be just like when we were kids. Hell, I can probably scrape together enough to get a spare cot in there. It’ll—it’ll be fun.”

Steve scoffs. Fun. As if _fun_ was what he needed. He almost says as much to Bucky, but he bites his tongue, realizing how cruel it would be. After all, Bucky—earnest and honest and _good_ a man as there ever were—was just trying to help in what was ostensibly the Rogers’ twins’ time of need.

“Come on,” Bucky repeats, softer this time.

“Thanks, Buck. But we can get by on our own.”

“Thing is—” Bucky starts, and he puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve wants to slap it off. He wants Bucky to pull him closer. He _wants._ But he doesn’t know what he wants. “You don’t _have_ to. I’m with you ‘till the end of the line, pal.”

Something about that line—something that would be so cheesy, so cliched in any other situation, makes Steve ache. A silence falls between them, heavy, tense, full of things unspoken. It wouldn't be hard for Steve to tell Bucky how he felt. It wouldn't be hard to tell Bucky, _I love you_. _I've always loved you_. It wouldn't be hard to tell Bucky to fuck off, either. But he doesn't tell Bucky either of those things. Steve doesn't say anything at all. Instead, he just sighs, smiling with what little warmth he still had the energy to muster.

“Well, I, uh—I’m not gonna keep you,” Bucky says eventually, his hand dropping away, almost pathetically, if it weren’t for the fact that _nothing_ Bucky does could ever be described as pathetic. Steve misses that solid, steadying weight on his shoulder immediately. In another life, he thinks to himself, he’ll hold onto Bucky. He’ll grab his arm and, no matter how weak his grip, look him in the eye and tell him, _I’m with you, too. I want you, too._ In another life, Steve will finally keep Bucky from pulling away just when it means the most.

But not in this life. Not on this day.

“Yeah,” is all Steve says, though he wants nothing more than for Bucky to stay; to come into that cold, empty apartment and hold him as he chases the ghost of his mother through the walls. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, turning away, looking like he doesn’t want to go, either. “Just—think about what I said, okay? All of it.”

“Okay.”

“Alright. So. I’ll—uh. I’ll see you, Steve. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah. You too, Buck.”

As he leaves, Bucky seems hesitant to turn away, hesitant, even, to take his eyes off Steve. But he manages it, turning around and stalking off, slumping his shoulders and shoving those big, solid hands of his into his pockets. Steve can imagine Ma Barnes, pulling in Bucky by the ear for rumpling up that nice suit of his. It hits Steve like a freight train, not for the first time that day, that he would never again get something like that from his own mother. As much as he would love to keep watching Bucky, to keep following that fuzzy gray dot until it blurs into the rest of the fuzzy gray dots of the city, Steve can’t. Not when his own mother is so sharp on his mind, once again. He draws himself inside, shutting the door sharply behind him. Just like his mother would tell him to do.

How he would ever continue to live in that apartment without her, Steve can’t even fathom. But how he would ever continue to live away from that apartment, he couldn’t know, either. He stalks across the kitchen, back into the bedroom, over to his cot right next to Grant’s, trying his hardest not to glance at the empty one at the other end of the room.

To his credit, Steve does not cry as he hangs his jacket, nor as he fumbles with his tie. He doesn’t cry, even as he remembers the day that his mother taught him how to tie a tie, for another funeral, so many years ago. As he strips away his formalwear, ostensibly closing the door on that day’s mourning, Steve Rogers does not cry, if only, as he tells himself, so that it will not wake Grant, laying still and sound, facing the wall—just as he always did when he did not have the heart to face the world.

Or, at least, when he didn’t want to face anyone but Steve. 

“We should do it,” Grant says, out of the blue.

Steve blinks, surprised at his brother’s sudden chattiness. So, he wasn’t asleep, after all. “Do what?”

Grant rolls over to face Steve. He looks tired, more tired than usual, even. But the look he gives Steve is unwavering. “You know what I mean. We should move in with Bucky.”

Steve wasn’t having this conversation. He laughs, humorlessly, as he strips down to his undershirt. “Thought you said you were going to sleep.”

“If I happened to overhear your conversation, it was because you were being such a stubborn ass that it was _physically keeping me up_ ,” Grant says. “Which is _exactly_ what you were doing, turning Bucky away like that.” 

“Oh, so we should just move in with him? And his three younger sisters? And his mom?” Steve laughs, bitterly. “And his hard-ass dad? No fucking way, Grant.”

“We’re not going to be able to afford the apartment, Steve. Between the fact that there’s hardly any work around for us, and how much all our medications cost? We have _just enough_ to stay here for the next two weeks. Maybe the next month and a half, if we sell some of Ma’s things—”

“We’re not,” Steve growls, “We’re not selling Ma’s things, Grant.”

“The _fuck_ we aren’t," Grant snaps back, just as raw and unyielding as Steve. They barely fight, the two of them, but when they do, it gets _dirty_. Steve breathes in slowly through his nose, trying hard not to fight his own brother on the day of their mother's funeral. "I’m not happy about it. You know I’m not. But we’re not gonna be using her nursing equipment. Or her clothes. We’re not gonna sell _all_ of it, but fuck, Steve. She wouldn’t want us to live on the streets ‘cause of her.”

He’s right. Steve _knows_ Grant is right. But he can’t stand listening to this. Not now. Not right after they’ve buried her. He’s acutely aware that his hands are trembling, but in true Steve Rogers fashion, his voice does not waver, even as he faces impossible realities head-on. “We’re not moving in with Bucky.”

Grant groans. He sounds irritated. Steve has no doubt that if they weren’t both so strung out from the events of the day, they would be screaming at each other. They might even be scrapping with each other, like they did when they were kids. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they would forgo that entirely, now that their mother wouldn’t be around to stop them. “Where the fuck else do you expect us to go, Steve?”

“I—we’ll figure it out. But we’re not—” Steve starts, dropping his voice down low. “We _can’t_.”

“Why not?”

Steve scoffs. He was _really_ ready to have this conversation be over with. That tenacity, that Rogers family stubbornness, really _was_ irritating, now that he was on the other end of it. “Seriously, Grant? Do I need to repeat myself?”

“Steve. Listen to me,” Grant says, sounding just as irritated, and just as dedicated to his position. “We’ve got _nowhere else to go_. Bucky’s looking out for us. Like he has. Like he always does. This is a bitter fucking pill, Steve, but we’ve gotta swallow it.”

“I know, but we can’t—" Steve starts. "Not with Bucky.”

“Why? _Really,_ Steve, why? I know it’s not ‘cause of Bucky’s mom, because you love her. And she loves you. And it sure as hell isn’t ‘cause of his sisters, because you’re just as much a big brother to them as Bucky is," Grant says, so riled up that he's actually moved to sit upright. "And yeah, Bucky’s dad is a real piece of work, but he sure as hell isn’t worse than living on the street."

He's right. Grant is fully right. But Steve can't admit that. Not after the rest of the day has been so hard. He can't even begin to think about asking Bucky. Right now, all Steve can do is breathe.

But, of course, Grant doesn't let him off so easily. “So why is it that you don’t wanna live with Bucky, Steve? Really.”

Steve sighs, sitting down on his cot, feeling more bone-tired than he ever had before. “You know why. I know you know why. And I’m not gonna say it. But you know.”

A silence falls between them. Steve _does_ know. And Grant, being his twin, being the other half of him, knows, too. 

“Maybe I know him differently than you do,” Grant says, breaking that silence as softly as he possibly can, as if not to start another fight. As if not to hurt Steve. “But he wouldn’t ask you—us—to live with him, if he didn’t feel the same way about you.”

Steve sighs. “I don’t think so.”

“I do.”

Another silence. Steve huffs. Grant, again, sighs. 

“Just. Think about it, Steve. Seriously,” Grant says, “Okay?”

“Fine,” Steve says, moving to lie down. He feels deflated, wrung-out, like there’s nothing left of him. All he wants to do is sleep, if his brother will ever let him. “Okay.”

Grant nods. “Thank you.”

Steve huffs. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, fuck you, too,” Grant says, gently as he ever would be.

\---

True to the calculations, Steve and Grant are able to spend three and a half weeks in that old, familiar apartment of theirs until they can afford to stay in the place no longer. After eighteen years, five months, and twelve days, Steve and Grant Rogers manage to gather up what few worldly possessions they kept, and say goodbye to their old building, the closest thing to a family home the two of them, up until then, ever had.

Bucky offers to help them move. There isn’t much to carry, but Steve revels in the way packing up the apartment forces Bucky down to short sleeves as he hauls a couple crates laden heavy with books and dishes up and down four flights of stairs. Dock work has done Bucky’s body _good._

\---

Living with the Barnes family is fine, maybe even better than fine, given that the ever-constant noise of the Barnes apartment fills holes left the impossibly-heavy silences of their former place, after Ma Rogers’ passing. Steve and Grant slot into the Barnes family home like they’d always been there, and Ma Barnes treats the Rogers boys just as dotingly as she does her own children. All is fine, _better than fine,_ until it’s not—until Steve catches a glimpse of what a lifetime of living with George Barnes as a father must have been like for the nineteen years of Bucky's young life.

George Barnes is a military man, through and through, the eldest son of a high-ranking military official and having served honorably in the Great War. He’s a strict disciplinarian, has a very specific idea of what _order_ means, and does not forgive easily.

And unfortunately, as Steve and Grant quickly come to learn, the worst of those tendencies are leveraged against Bucky the most.

“You don’t have to worry about my dad,” Bucky says, after retreating to their room, following one particularly-rough tearing-down from his father. From the way his tone falters, Steve can tell that he desperately, desperately wants to change the subject, to forget everything that just happened. “Ma—bless her, I swear to God, she’s the only one who can reason with him—managed to get him to compromise on letting you two move in if you both pay rent, which, you know. She’s not gonna charge you more than a dollar or two between the both of you. But he doesn’t have to know that. So, you know. He’s gonna leave you alone.”

And the way that he says that, the way that Bucky speaks with the air of defeatedness, of inevitability—it makes Steve feel weaker than any of the bouts of pneumonia or flu ever have.

\---

Beyond being unable to protect Bucky from his own father, living in the Barnes family household is _fine._ It’s great.

Maybe a little _too great._

Because Steve is desperately, _painfully_ in love with Bucky. And living under the same roof as him—living in the same _room_ as him—and not being able to admit that he _wants_ Bucky is, to Steve, practically a form of torture.

Steve never realized just how _close_ to Bucky he would be until he was living through it. He can reach out his arm from his cot and touch his fingertips to Bucky’s ever-broadening back. He can be in Bucky’s bed in less time than it takes for him to put on his slippers.

He can, on the nights that Bucky thinks he’s _sure_ the twins are asleep, hear the rushed, choked-off sounds of Bucky masturbating. Steve doesn’t dare touch himself, in turn. No matter how much he _yearns_ to.

Sometimes, though, after Bucky tugs one out and tries to sneak a late-night smoke out on the fire escape, Steve will join him.

One night, after listening in on a particularly-tense argument between Bucky and his father, Steve does so.

“Mind if I join you?” Steve asks, and it almost feels like a forbidden rendezvous. 

“Oh, ‘course,” Bucky murmurs, breathing out long, snaking tendrils of smoke. He looks ethereal, like that. Colorblind though he may be, Steve has a feeling that  _golden_ is probably exactly what Bucky is, all lit up by the moonlight and city lights. “I could actually use some company, right about now.”

Steve taps a cigarette out, and Bucky lights it, their fingers just _barely_ brushing as Bucky pulls away. For a while, they smoke in silence, plumes of white smoke wafting up and away. It burns his lungs to hell, but Steve can’t help but watch, enraptured, as each snaking puff of smoke dissipates—as if, maybe, it will take them both up and away, along with them.

“Sorry if Dad woke you up earlier,” Bucky says eventually, breaking that terse silence, “With the whole, _No son of mine_ speech, and all.”

All Steve can do is shrug at that, watching Bucky carefully as he takes a long, long drag. What follows is another silence; another awkward pause between them, another conversation quashed, unspoken.  

“You’re bigger than him now, you know,” Steve says suddenly, the words just spilling out of his mouth, as if out of nowhere, like the smoke from his awful goddamn asthma cigarettes. “You can stand up to him. Fight back. You don’t have to keep taking that.” 

Bucky shakes his head, letting out a sigh that seems roughly equivalent to the weight of the goddamn world. He flicks his cigarette and takes a long drag, exhaling it long and slow through his nose. Steve can’t help but admire those long, dark eyelashes of his, brushing against his cheeks in a way that Steve only _wishes_ he could touch Bucky. “It’s—it’s not that easy, Stevie.”

And maybe it isn’t. But God, Steve wishes that it could be. He wishes that this wasn’t the one bully he couldn’t stand up to.

More than anything—he wishes he had the power, the strength, to keep Bucky safe.  

\---

A few days after that, Bucky wakes the twins up with the prospect of a trip to Coney Island. He’s already dressed when he asks, probably having decided that he was going to go before he'd even set off to bed the night before. Of course, Steve agrees. He would agree to go to war for Bucky, if the guy asked. His brother, on the other hand, was less-ecstatic about going to Coney Island at the beginning of the summer rush. 

“Wanna come?” Bucky asks, as Steve throws on some clean clothes. He picks up a short-sleeved shirt that's probably actually Grant's, and a pair of dark trousers.

“Nah. I’m feeling lightheaded again,” Grant says, with a shrug. “I think I’m just gonna stay in bed and read today.”

“Well, shit,” Bucky says, sitting on the foot of the twins’ bed. “Did you eat?”

“You’re turning into your mother,” Grant says, rolling his eyes. When Bucky doesn’t leave, he sighs and answers him. “Yes, Bucky, I ate. Peanut butter and mayo sandwich. Even put some pickles on it.”

“Good, good to hear,” Bucky says, and he looks like he's about to stay at home and watch after Grant. It makes Steve think to the first time that Bucky came to visit them while they were ill, the first time that Grant actually really _acknowledged_ Bucky. To think it was so long ago makes something go all soft in Steve's chest. 

“Sure is,” Grant replies. “Now, do you feel better? Good enough to go out and have a good time?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Bucky laughs. 

“If it really bothers you, the three of us can do something tonight,” Grant says. He says it like he’s put-upon, but Steve knows his brother as well as he knows himself. Grant might not be in love with Bucky like Steve is, but Steve knows—his fondness for the guy rubbed off on Grant a long, long time ago.

“Think you’ll be good enough to go out dancing?” Bucky asks, looking at Grant with a care that Steve, despite himself, envies.

“Who said _dancing,_ Barnes?” Grant laughs. “You know I can’t afford that. Nah, I’m not going _dancing._ Now, if you wanna play cards on the roof, I’m your guy.”

Bucky looks at Grant for a second, his eyebrows furrowed, as if he’s having trouble reading him, as if Grant’s fondness is not clear as day. Eventually, he breaks out into that soft, familiar smile, and he nods.

“Alright. Alright, that sounds good to me,” Bucky says. He turns around and leverages that smile at Steve, and _God,_ that smile could get Steve to agree to anything. Cards on the roof or capital felonies. Whatever it took to make Bucky smile at him like that, Steve would do it. “What do you think, Stevie?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Steve says, looking straight at Bucky—and not at his twin brother.

“Great,” Bucky agrees, and God, Steve could get lost in how pretty that boy is.

“Great, swell. Glad we all agreed it’s great,” Grant says, “Now, you kooky kids have fun at Coney Island, and we’ll talk about this later.”

Bucky nods, and he stands, meeting Steve at the door. Before he exits their shared room, though, he turns around, and asks, one last time: “Grant, you sure you don’t wanna—?”

“Jesus _Christ,”_ Grant groans, rolling his eyes in a _spectacularly_ smarmy way. _“_ Are you two gonna leave me to read my book or what? Go!”

Bucky smiles that million-watt smile of his. “We’ll bring you something back.”

“Cotton candy, if you can, but you know I’m not picky,” Grant says, not looking up from his copy of _Tender is the Night._

“Bye, Grant,” Bucky says, with a little salute.

“Bye, asshole,” Steve says. Grant flips him the bird without looking up from his book.

\---

Their adventure to Coney Island goes by in a blur. They play skee-ball and lunch on frankfurters, even in spite of the both of them having a hearty lunch at Ma Barnes’ insistence before leaving. Steve doesn’t ride the Cyclone, not yet, but Bucky promises that by the summer’s end, he’ll get Steve up there. The early summer crowds are a breeze with Bucky by Steve’s side, and when Bucky loops their arms together—ostensibly, so that they don’t get lost—Steve can at least pretend that there’s something more to the gesture than that. By the time that they’re on the train back home, Steve is floating, his chest tight with something that he knows fully well isn’t an asthma attack.

“I’m gonna help Ma with the cooking,” Bucky says, as soon as they arrive back in the Barnes residence. “Steve. Don’t forget Becca you promised you’d help her with her art project earlier.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell her to hold her horses, I’ll be over in the kitchen in a minute. Now go, before your Ma comes and gets you,” Steve says. Bucky shakes his head, but makes his way off anyway, and as guilty as it makes Steve feel, he can’t help but watch Bucky’s tight little ass swaying as he makes his way out.  

“So,” Grant says, tossing his book to the side the second Bucky is out of earshot. He switches to their twin-language quickly, seamlessly, so to keep Steve’s not-so-secret secret. “ _How’d your date with Bucky go?_ ”

Steve freezes, feeling his cheeks burn at the implication that he and Bucky could be anything more than what they were, anything close to what he _hopes_ they could be.

“ _Not a date,_ ” Steve shoots back. 

“Uh-huh,” Grant hums, cheekily. “ _And you’re sure Bucky doesn’t feel the same way?”_

“ _I—why would he?_ ” Steve asks, “ _He’s dating What’s-her-Name. Dot.”_

“Not anymore,” Grant says, temporarily switching to English, but keeping his voice low, barely above a murmur. “They broke up last week, remember?”

Steve blinks, not feeling stunned, but needing, if only briefly, to take a pause. “Really?”

“Really.”

Steve considers this, for a moment. This new information, knowing that Bucky had broken up with his latest fling, feels a certain way that Steve can't quite articulate, not fully. It feels like a strange bit of cruel joy. It feels like a relief. It feels like a chance at hope. But Steve couldn't afford that kind of hope. Not when the stakes were losing Bucky. 

“ _Still doesn’t make it a date,_ ” Steve grumbles, earning a roll of the eyes from Grant.

“ _You’re living under his roof, you’re helping his sister out, you’ve even made nice with his_ mom," Grant says, flatly, raising his eyebrows. _"You’re practically married to the guy, Steve.”_

“I wish,” Steve says, in perfect English, and he means it.

He really, honestly, means it.

\---

That night, as soon as the rest of the Barnes family is fast asleep, the three of them scramble onto the rooftop, smuggling a couple beers and a carton of cigarettes up with them. It’s the perfect summer night. It’s not particularly humid, and it’s cool, without being cold. There’s even a little breeze, bringing with it the hint of seawater. It’s the perfect summer night to be young and irresponsible, even if that means foregoing a dance hall, and instead, settling for drinking cheap beer on the roof while watching the city go by.

And deep down, Steve likes when they skip the dance halls altogether. Because deep down, Steve knows that means that he’ll get more attention from Bucky. Bucky, whose sharp angles and broad shoulders glow, all lit up by the lights of the city below them. Bucky, whose familiar, bouncy curls are just _begging_ for Steve to run his fingers through. Bucky, who Steve has been in love with for the better part of his young life.  

He could kiss Bucky right there. He could. But he doesn’t. Not even the fuzziness in his stomach, the lightheadedness that comes with being just on the outer edge of drunk, can push him to kissing Bucky. But he edges his hand up close to Bucky’s, dangerously-close. They don’t hold hands, not then—but as their pinkies bump up against one another, Steve’s heart soars.

Maybe he couldn’t _actually_ tell Bucky how he felt about him, but even still, he’s convinced that night is the best night of his young life. And if he could, if he _really_ had a chance to wish, he’d make that night last forever.  

\---

Of course, that night couldn’t last forever.

Summer had to make way for fall, which, in turn, faded out into winter.

And with the coming of winter, Bucky Barnes would be called to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably the quickest time between chapters that i've ever gone, but honestly? this kind of feels great? this is fully different from my posting schedule with hot librarian au. i don't expect to keep up this kind of quick posting with other fics, but hey. it's nice while it's happening. 
> 
> some quick notes, fewer than in other fics, but notes nonetheless:  
> \- this chapter was originally the second half of the previous chapter. i'm glad that i separated them, i think it flows a little more cleanly this way.  
> \- related to hot librarian au, i like to imagine that grant gets most of his books from the brooklyn public library. so, it's not that this is happening on the year that [fitzgerald's tender is the night](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46164.Tender_Is_the_Night) was published, it's just that it happens to be what he picked up. i know dates (kind of).  
> \- [here's a really good brief resource](https://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/nickelempire.htm) to thinking about coney island in the 1940s.  
> \- i regret to inform you that [peanut butter and mayo with pickle sandwiches](https://blog.eogn.com/2018/10/18/the-food-of-our-ancestors-a-peanut-butter-mayonnaise-sandwich/) was (is?) a real thing and was at the very least a Great Depression Meal. at least three of those four ingredients do not belong together, i'll tell you that much and no i will not be taking questions on it, thank you.  
> \- originally, this chapter was planned to take place on the fourth of july, but i decided against it. 
> 
> next: boys in the machine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> charlie boys; raise your rifles to the sky, boys.

For whatever reason, Bucky waits as long as he can before he tells Steve and Grant that he’s been drafted.

Steve, of course, does not take it well.

He’s angry. Angry at Bucky for keeping it from them. Angry at Grant for trying tell him there’s nothing that anyone xan do. Angry at the war for trying to take Bucky from him.

When Bucky gets sent out to basic, Steve is _still_ angry. But not at Bucky, not anymore. No, when Bucky gets sent off to basic, Steve is angry at himself. Steve is angry he can’t fight this one. He's angry that he can’t join Bucky. More than anything, Steve is angry that he’s constantly being labelled 4-F: _unfit due to medical issues._ Literally, his body is not enough. _He_ is not enough.

But that doesn’t mean he stops trying.

\---

Grant thinks it’s stupid that Steve keeps trying to go to war. Especially when there’s a good enough fight happening at home. Especially when there was a though enough fight against fascism in their very backyards. Especially when he _knows_ his brother like he knows himself. Steve won’t last a month in the trenches if he gets shipped out. Hell, their father didn’t.

But that doesn’t stop his brother.

Steve inherited the weak lungs, and Grant might have inherited the weak heart, but Grant’s heart breaks, even more than it’s already broken, whenever his brother comes home from every failed enlistment attempt, 4-F stamped in red, the label a brand, a condemnation, a pity, like all the sad smiles and speeches from doctors and nurses who said they’d never live.

Hell. If he were Steve, of _course_ he'd try to prove them wrong.

And eventually, even though he knows he’s no less likely to get accepted than Steve, Grant, with the big, broken heart, starts trying, too.

\---

On the day that Bucky is bound to ship out, on the day before Bucky officially becomes part of the 107th infantry, Steve gets in a fight.

It’s not the most noble cause to fight for in the world, but he doesn't back down from it nonetheless. It all starts as Steve goes off to see a movie on his own. He usually doesn't go to the movies by himself, but Grant doesn't care for cartoons like Steve does, and of course, Bucky wants to spend as much time with the other Barneses as he can, before going off to Europe to fight. Steve goes off to see a movie, fully intending to get out of his funk, but quickly end ends up in a back alley, losing a fistfight to Donnie’s brother, Mikey, because Mikey is _also_ at the movies, and being _real fuckin’ rud._ at them, too.

With a boatload of conviction and his mood already dour after _another_ 4-F rejection, Steve isn’t willing to go down without a fight. Mikey swings at Steve, knocking him out, but Steve gets back up, grabbing a trash can lid—a shield, if he needs it, a bludgeoning weapon, if worse _really_ comes to worse.

“You really don’t know when to give up, do you?” Mikey asks, sounding a little winded. At least, that’s Steve’s hope.

And because Steve is Steve, his reaction is to snark back. “I can do this all day.”  

Mikey slugs him, and Steve is down again, but before Mikey can really get start wailing on Steve, a familiar voice cuts through the alley, like clockwork, like true North: “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

 _Bucky._  

Looking head-to-toe a soldier, Bucky grabs Mikey by the arm, putting as much distance between him and Steve as possible. Mikey is still raging, and tries to swing at Bucky, earning a mean right hook and a literal kick in the ass. That's enough to send him scampering off, not looking back—and enough for Bucky to turn all his attention, positive or not, back to Steve.

“Sometimes, I think you just like getting beat up and humiliated,” Bucky sighs, helping Steve off the ground.

“I had ‘em on the ropes,” Steve grumbles, but he can’t stay mad, not when Bucky is all dolled up in his parade uniform, hair perfectly-coiffed and hat tilted just _so._

“Sure, you did,” Bucky says, unconvinced, but like he knows it's not something worth fighting over. Not now, not on his last day home. “Now, come on. It’s my last night in town. Let’s swing by and get your brother, freshen you up, before we go.”

“Before we go _where?_ ” Steve asks, just as Bucky hands him a flyer reading _StarkExpo 1942._

Bucky grins at him, hopeful and bright and still so, so boyish, in all the ways that Steve will know he misses, once Bucky is enlisted. “The future.”

\---

The StarkExpo is fine enough. Grant, already skeptical of the show, leaves after the hovercar fails, hugging Bucky tightly and telling him all the same sort of things that Steve is dreading saying himself. Eventually, the night goes on, and Bucky finds a date for the night without really trying to. All the other soldiers found dames to write home to, why else wouldn’t Bucky? Steve tries not to get too upset about it, but he can tell that the woman doesn't want him around, and tries to use it as a way to slip away. Before Steve can go, though, Bucky grabs him by the shoulder, pulling him in close—not too close, not close enough that it would mean anything, but _close._

“Hey,” Bucky says, desperate, as if remembering how this is no simple goodbye, not really. “You—you be careful while I’m gone, okay? And quit it with the enlistment thing, alright?”

Steve shrugs. “Don’t see why I should. Men are laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them.”

“Jesus,” Bucky groans, “Come on, Steve. Not now. Not when I’m about to leave, okay?”

Steve shrugs, prickly. “I’m just saying, Buck. I’m just saying.”  

Bucky sighs, sounding exhausted. Maybe Steve really had the moral high ground. Or maybe he was just picking a fight with Bucky. Maybe he was working under the flawed logic that, if they got in a fight, Bucky wouldn't be able to leave, as if it worked that way. Whatever the real reasons may be for Steve's bullishness, it doesn't yield anything, because Bucky doesn’t react. Not in the way that Steve is expecting. Instead, Bucky just pulls Steve into a hug, holding his small frame tight. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

Steve smiles, trying hard to hold back tears. Bucky _always_ has to make things difficult, doesn't he? “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

Bucky sighs, hugging Steve almost so tight as to break him. “You’re a punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve murmurs, as gently as he can manage without crying. He breathes in the familiar scent of Bucky’s scent, as if to imprint it into his brain, knowing that it’s fully-possible that it will be the last time that he'll ever be able to smell it. “Be careful.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, just as soft. “Yeah, Stevie.”

\--

The second Bucky is out of view, Steve steps into the recruitment office. He’s done this before. He knows how it goes. It’s practically routine. He's used to the stares. He's used to the judging. He's used to nurses and aides who clearly look like they're humoring him. He’s used to it. All of it.

But what Steve _isn’t_ used to is someone taking him seriously.

When the doctor steps into the exam room, he looks over Steve carefully. He doesn't shake his head, he doesn't betray any feelings, he just flips through Steve's chart, stopping to review a couple notes, as if he's considering accepting Steve. _That's_ new.

“So,” the doctor says eventually, his voice soft, accented. Already, he seems different from the other ones. Steve, despite himself, feels a strange sort of hope. “You want to kill some Nazis?”

“Sorry?” Steve asks. _That_ usually wasn’t an intake question, either.

The doctor extends his hand. Steve takes it, shaking gently. Firmly. Just like his Ma taught him polite boys do. “Doctor Abraham Erksine. I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve.”

“Steve Rogers. Pleasure to meet you,” Steve says, feeling unsettled at the sudden shift, the question left hanging. Erksine hums, flipping through Steve’s file. Bare-chested and cold, Steve feels fully exposed. Intake exams usually don’t take this long. So, he tries to make small talk. “So, uh. Where’re you from?”

“Queens,” Erksine answers. Of course, he's from New York. Why wouldn't he be? Steve feels embarrassed, but Erksine does not give him the chance to wallow in it. “Before that, Germany. Does this trouble you?”

Steve shakes his head. “No.”

Erksine hums. “So. Where are _you_ from, Steve? Five different exams in five different cities. Five different tries.”

“I, uh—that might,” Steve says, quickly remembering the sign behind him, the sign that he’d ignored so many times before, _IT IS ILLEGAL TO FALSIFY YOUR ENLISTMENT FORM._ “That, uh. That might not be the right file.”

“It’s not the exams I’m interested in, Steve, but the tries,” Erksine says, almost sage-like. That admission of mutual rule-breaking, of troublemaking, of sharing and keeping little white lies, makes Steve feel better. Erksine is the first doctor he feels at ease with, and he’s only known the guy for a few minutes. It's a good sign, he thinks. It has to be. “So. Do you want to kill Nazis?”

Steve doesn’t even have to think about his response before he launches into it. As much as he should be more careful, Steve is able to answer without hesitating. It’s just encoded into his body, seemingly, like his willingness to fight back, or his dedication to justice, or even, hell, his colorblindness.  

“I don’t want to kill _anyone,_ ” Steve answers, earnestly. Honestly. He looks Erksine in the eye as he says so, making sure that it’s completely clear that, as many enlistment forms as he might have lied on, as many things he might have fudged, he isn’t bullshitting on this one. “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.”

Erksine looks at him, level, unreadable, but warm, before nodding. “Well. There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is the little guy, eh?"

Steve doesn't really get where he's going, or maybe he's still in disbelief, still stunned that someone was willing to take him seriously. But Erksine spells it out, quite clearly:

"I can offer you a chance.”

Steve blinks, almost not comprehending what he’s hearing. Erksine was offering him a chance. Erksine was offering him the ability to fight, to do good, to _fight bullies, wherever they may be._ He barely has words. But he manages. Somehow, Steve manages. “I—Thank you, sir. I’ll—I’ll take the chance.”

“It’s _only_ a chance,” Erksine repeats, filling out a few forms, signing a few documents. Just as he’s about to seal the deal—just as Erksine is about to label Steve’s file with that coveted 1-A, Steve stops, realizing, almost embarrassingly, that Grant wouldn’t have anyone but the Barneses if he were to ship out.

“Wait,” Steve says, suddenly. Erksine stops writing, seemingly mid-sentence. “I have a brother.”

“Oh?” says the doctor, raising his eyebrows. He puts his pen down, looking at Steve, once again, very, very carefully.  

“He’s my twin brother," Steve says. Thinking about Grant, all alone with the Barnes family, _kills_ Steve. He can’t leave him. He _has_ to extend the very same chance to his twin brother. "He’s sick like me. And in different ways, too. But he has the guts of a soldier, and about twice as much brains as I do. If you’re gonna take me on, you gotta take him, too.”

And this, somehow, seems to change things. Erskine shifts, slightly, and Steve knows that this chance is such a golden opportunity. He knows he’s risking squandering it. But Steve won’t budge. Steve Rogers doesn't budge for most things, and he's not going to budge for this. Not for his brother.

“I don’t know, Steve,” says Erksine, “Bringing your brother in is reminiscent of things that I don’t quite feel comfortable being involved in. Scientifically, the implications become—it’s—well, frankly, Steve, it’s unethical.”

“Please, sir,” Steve says, a phrase that he’s used many, many times to doctors in his life. This time is different, though. This time, it’s not out of desperation, but out of chance, out of _possibility._ “You’ll already be experimenting on me. Just—let him have the chance to have that, too. He’s—he’s all I’ve got.”

Erksine sighs, taking off his glasses, and pinching the bridge of his nose. For a second, Steve thinks it’s about to say no. For a second, Steve thinks that, of course, this offer was too good to be true. Of course, this opportunity would only last as long as Steve was willing to fall in line for it. But instead, Erksine stamps Steve’s folder, anyway, finally filling that box with a shiny, dark _1-A_ , before handing the folder back with a little chagrined sigh.

“I’ll see you _and_ your brother tomorrow,”

Erksine says.

"Yes," Steve says, his hands nearly trembling. "I—we won't let you down."

\---

When Steve tells Grant the good news, he can hardly believe it. What they would be doing, neither of them could guess. But they were doing it—they were going to serve the country. Though they couldn't ever know for sure, Steve suspects that even as his mother tried to keep the boys from running into fights bigger than them, even after losing Joe Rogers made her virulently anti-war, of the Rogers' boys determination, at the very least, Sarah Rogers would be proud.

\---

Basic training is harder than either of the Rogers boys could have ever imagined. But they’re determined. They’re clever. And, if nothing else, Steve and Grant don’t know how or when to quit. Which is why Erksine put his full career behind them, the both of them, after all.

Not that anyone else is impressed with the two of them. The colonel, Colonel Phillips, makes his suspicion of the two very clear. The other recruits mock them mercilessly, until the take-no-shit, highly-trained British officer snaps them back into line. No one but Erksine—and, seemingly, Peggy Carter, the sharp-tongued British officer whom Grant _clearly_ has eyes for—seems to put any stock in the either of them. They’re not great soldiers, after all.

But, Erksine reminds them, that isn’t why they were chosen in the first place. Steve and Grant weren’t chosen to be perfect soldiers.

Steve and Grant were chosen because they are _good men._

And that, Steve thinks, Steve _hopes,_ bodes well for _the procedure._ If not for him, for his twin brother, at the very least.

\---

 _The procedure_ , it turns out, is being stuck in a lead-lined coffin and pumped full of some sort of blue serum and pounded with something called Vita-Rays, all courtesy of Doctor Erksine and one Howard Stark. It sounds crazy. It sounds like something out of one of the comic books Bucky would buy.

And it _works._

As soon as Steve steps out of the chamber, he feels heartier, more resilient. His vision is clearer, his lungs healthier, and for the first time in his life, he can see _colors_. Sure, he doesn't feel any taller, or any bigger, but he feels _stronger_. Steve glances over at his brother's chamber, only to see a crowd quickly gathering around Grant—who seems to have hit a growth spurt, from his own serum. Before Steve can push through, though, an explosion rings out, followed by the sharp bang of gunshots, and all of a sudden, Erksine is dead, and a man from the crowd—presumably, a Nazi spy—is running off with the last remaining vial of the serum.

Steve doesn’t even pause to look behind him before he goes off after the guy. In doing so, Steve finds out that the serum has fast, faster than any human he’d ever met before, and for _sure_ faster than he ever could be, before the procedure. He’s strong, too, far stronger than he looks, at five-foot-four and barely a hundred-something pounds. In the confusion, in the chase, he hears his brother call out to him, and Steve, briefly, registers that the big, muscular blond man who’s been following him for a half a block is actually his own twin brother. They maneuver together as if in sync, capturing the spy quickly, but not quick enough. The last vial of the serum has been shattered, and the serum-thief—seeing that he is about to be captured, seeing that he has failed his mission, bites down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his tooth. As he does so, he hisses one last warning: _Cut off one hand, two more shall take its pace._

\---

With the spy deceased, the Rogers boys take him back to base, and quickly get shuffled off to get thorough medical examinations. After all, they _were_ still science experiments. It's a long, arduous, invasive process, and Steve, ever-familiar with doctors, is tired of it already.

By the time that Steve is done being checked by the SSR nurses, Grant has already been fully-examined. When Steve steps into the hospital lobby, Grant and Peggy are speaking to one another. Although they're not laughing, although they both look very, very serious, Steve can feel them getting along _swimmingly._

“Grant?” Steve asks, cutting in only a _little_ rudely. Peggy looks up, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, murmuring something about leaving the twins to their business, before she leaves.

Grant nods, and waves goodbye to her, before making his way over to his brother. “Hey, Steve.”

“Holy _shit,_ Grant,” Steve says, staring up at his brother, really taking him in for the first time. “You’re huge.”

“I know!” Grant says, excitedly. He looks down at Steve, and _wow,_ is being looked down on by his own twin brother, his own face, practically, is really strange. “But—you—”

Steve brushes it off. Somehow—and he doesn’t know how—he can feel his own brother’s anxiety, his confusion, his hurt. “—it’s okay. It’s more than okay, actually. It’s great. I can see _colors_ now! I’m—I’m good. It's all really good. Even though I’m not a smokeshow like you.”

“Oh,” Grant says, but that feeling of discomfort—a discomfort that is not his own—does not disappear from his stomach. “Okay. Great.”

“Seriously, Grant. It’s okay. I can tell you’re not feeling okay about it, but it really is okay,” Steve says. Then, he adds, as if to explain: “I know. Because I can feel you.”

Grant nods. “I can feel you, too.”

A silence settles between them. Steve can tell, and Grant probably can, too: they both feel excited, and upset, and confused, all at once.  

“So, this is how it’s gonna be from now on, huh?” Grant asks, looking down at his brother, his twin—no longer identical, but twins, nonetheless.

“Yeah,” Steve says, nodding. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

\---

They don’t go straight to the front. Not as they had been promised. Not as they had hoped.

Grant gets to serve their country, albeit, in a different way. Instead of the army handing him a rifle and sending him to war, they hand him over to some some senator, who gives him a pair of bright blue tights. Grant—as _Captain America_ —becomes a USO celebrity.

And both the Rogers boys _hate it._

They get shipped overseas, eventually. It’s salt in the wound, Grant reciting the _rah-rah war effort_ lines to worn, weary soldiers and Steve stuck backstage, the eternal _plus-one,_ having been erased from _Captain America’s_ history in service of buttressing the myth of the Great American Man. Steve and Grant Rogers become Steven Grant Rogers, a myth, a fabulation, a living misremembered memory.

Not that Steve envies Grant. The troops don’t appreciate the lines that he’s memorized, nor the peppy patriotism the USO has made him the face of. As the Rogers twins sit backstage after a failed performance, a familiar British voice breaks them out of their self-pity.

“Hello, there,” Agent Carter says. Grant perks up, immediately.

“Hi,” he says, sweetly, excitedly. Like a goddamn puppy. He's so, so lost on her. Steve tries to bite his tongue.

“Quite the performance,” she says, and Steve shrugs.

“It was either this, or continue to be the SSR's lab rats,” he says.

“Those can’t be your only options,” Peggy says, frowning. She was hard to read, sometimes, but Steve can see the disappointment on her face, clear and earnest. “You know—the both of you—you were meant for more than this.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve laughs, “You’re telling me.”

Sirens in the background of camp alert the three of them to new arrivals: the wounded and dying, the men who _actually_ came overseas to do everything that Grant’s character said he did. The men who actually did what Steve and Grant intended to do, before—this.

“Looks like they’ve been through hell,” Grant murmurs.

“These men more than most,” Peggy says, her voice sounding heavy, but laden with familiarity. “Two hundred men went up against Schmidt in Azzano and less than fifty returned. It's a shame. The men in this camp are the last of the hundred-and-seventh. The rest were killed or captured.”

And that number, that regiment, signals a flare in Steve's mind immediately.

“The hundred-and-seventh?” Steve asks, information clicking into place, quickly. “That’s Bucky’s unit.”

Grant stands up, fully anticipating what Steve is about to propose. “Are you—?”

Steve nods, already pulling on his brown leather jacket. “We _have_ to.”

“Steve—” Grant starts.

“ _Grant, he’s family!”_ Steve yells, in their twin-language. Grant frowns, but the set of his jaw is strong, determined. With a sigh, Grant turns to Peggy, and in Brooklyn-accented American English, asks, gently: “You wouldn’t happen to have a plane we could borrow, would you?”

\---

As is turns out, Peggy _did_ have a plane they could borrow, courtesy of Howard Stark. How their paths kept crossing with the wealthiest man in New York was beyond the Rogers boys. Maybe they would make something of it, later. For now, they were single-mindedly focused on one thing: liberating the 107th infantry from enemy territory. Steve—outfitted in boots, his jacket, and his stagecrew clothes—follows his brother, still dressed in the Captain America costume, only, this time, outfitted with a similar leather jacket and a shield from the props treasury. They both take two matching helmets: blue "A" helmets, intended for the chorus girls, cobbling together as much as a uniform as possible in fifteen minutes. Before they know it, before they even really have a chance to prepare, Steve and Grant are behind enemy lines, testing out their supersoldier skills in the real-world, with real stakes, for the first time.

Even if they hadn’t done it since their last few nights in Brooklyn, Steve and Grant come into fighting _as_ supersoldiers easily. Steve, in particular, finds stealth an easy strategy, what, now that his small body is near-indestructible. Eventually, after trudging through muddy forests and commandeering a transport vehicle, they reach the Hydra facility. When inside, they decide to split up, and while Grant makes his way to free captured hostages, Steve goes to the real goal of his mission, to find Bucky. Eventually, it takes a while, but Steve finds him. It’s as he’s roaming the halls that he hears that familiar cadence, rattling off his rank and serial number, monotonously, his words slurring together. Steve's heart skips a beat the moment that he realizes it's _Bucky_. 

“Bucky!” Steve exclaims, the moment he runs into the room. Strapped to what looks like a morgue table and having clearly been beaten, Bucky looks like he’s half to death when Steve lays eyes on him. All Steve wants is to hold Bucky, to touch him. But for now, all he can do is get him out of those restraints.

Bucky blinks, as if he can’t believe his eyes. “Steve—?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Steve breathes, leaning in close, as if to make sure Bucky could see him. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“Steve, I—"

“Did you find—oh, my God,” says Grant's voice, suddenly, a light tramp of footfalls following him. It sounds like he's gotten backup. Grant runs in as soon as he sees his brother, and, upon seeing Bucky, pulls the straps off Bucky like it’s _nothing._ Steve doesn’t feel insecure about that. He could do the same thing, after all. He had the same kind of strength as Grant. No, he's not jealous of Grant saving Bucky. But Steve _does_ feel a little insecure about how Bucky is looking at Grant, as if the whole room was just _him_ now.  

“We thought you were dead,” Grant says, hefting Bucky upright.

“I—” Bucky starts, darting between Grant, and Steve, and Steve, and Grant, and back again. “I thought you were smaller.”

\---

A firefight ensues, erupting between the now-freed members of the 107th and unsuspecting Hydra goons. Steve and Grant lead the charge, and they all escape the Hydra facility, but only barely. With Bucky in tow and every other missing member of the 107th, along with them, Steve and Grant lead the march back to camp, proud in having proven themselves capable as Erksine knew they would be. Grant, even, has put together a little ragtag squad of troops, the five men brave enough to be the first to fight alongside a man wearing an American-flag uniform and carrying a prop shield: Jim Morita, Gabe Jones, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Montgomery Falsworth, Jacques Dernier. A grade-A team if the army ever had one.

Schmidt is like them, they learn, but a failed experiment, evidence of the serum amplifying the _strongest_ qualities of people, down to the very heart. They learn that Schmidt calls himself the Red Skull because his version of the serum literally made him that. Bucky doesn’t seem to take the news well, his entire body tensing when he gives his testimony about Schmidt. Other than that, Bucky is in surprisingly-good health, physically—the best health of all the prisoners, the nurses tell Steve. It’s a miracle that he's doing so well, Steve thinks, especially given the state he was in at Azzano. He's well enough to join Grant's ragtag group of soldiers, Captain America's special ops team, as a sniper—even though Steve knows that Bucky should instead, be shipped home. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, Steve agrees to fight alongside them, to fight alongside the _Howling Commandos,_ as he and Grant get real suits, a real vibranium shield shared between them, and Captain America—a title belonging to a man who does not exist—becomes a _real_ captain.  

\---

The Howling Commandos, as a special ops team, take on the elite goal of taking down Hydra, and Hydra specifically. It becomes very flashy, as secret as their missions must be. Steve is always the man behind the camera in the newsreels, the man behind the scenes. Beyond that, being part of the Howling Commandos is more than Steve could have ever expected. It’s brotherhood—all the men, but especially Dum Dum and Gabe, fellow New Yorkers, quickly become a new kind of family. It’s a sense of _purpose_ —not only defeating Nazis, stamping out bullies and fascism wherever they may rise, but defeating _superpowered über-regime._ And all the while, it’s being close to _Bucky._ Even Grant has a chance to find something, in getting ever-closer to Agent Carter, closer than he’s ever been to anybody, save for Bucky and Steve.  

It’s no picnic, by far. It’s still war. But at the very least, it’s doing what Steve and Grant were set out to do. It’s being _good men,_ for the service of defeating bullies, wherever—whoever—they may be.

\---

Of course, that closeness has its downsides, too. Especially as Steve starts to notice changes in Bucky, shifts that speak to the trauma of his time in Azzano and the compounding violence of the war.

One night, as they make camp deep in the woods, having finally made it to friendly territory, it gets to be too much. It's too much for Steve, watching Bucky from across the fire, looking so, so _broken._ Steve sits next to his brother, and speaks in _their_ language, never once taking his eyes off Bucky.

“ _I’m worried about Bucky_ ,” Steve says, soft, the second Grant looks over.

“Yeah?” Grant whispers back, in English.

Steve sighs. “ _He looks—unhappy. All this time, he’s looked unhappy. Hasn’t been the same. Not since we got him out of that Hydra hellhole._ ”

“ _You know he’s not going to let us send him home,”_ Grant replies, switching to twin-language, now that he has to say more.

That's not an answer. Not for Steve. “ _He’s not okay.”_

 _“I know that,"_ Grant sighs, his features going very, very serious. " _Don’t think I don’t see that. But you know him. We both know him. And he’s not gonna leave us alone, not for a second.”_

“ _I know. But I think—”_ Steve starts. He doesn’t know _what_ he thinks. But he knows something happened. “ _I think Hydra—I think they might have—"_

Steve isn’t able to finish that thought. They’re jolted back to the larger context, to being with the rest of the Howlies, as Dum Dum laughs, pointing at the two of them from across the fire. “Hey, what’re you two planning?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, smiling innocently—innocuously—back at him. He doesn’t want to be suspicious, but he doesn’t want to make the mood too serious, either.

“Bull- _shit,_ ” Dum Dum says, clearly not falling for Steve’s fake-innocence. Which is fine enough. Just so long as they aren't able to detect the grave seriousness of Steve and Grant's prior, secret conversation. “Falsworth, what’d the twins say?”

Falsworth shrugs. “I couldn’t make it out. Didn’t sound like any language I understand.”

“They were speaking in their _twin-language,_ ” Bucky says, even his interruptions subdued, looking the closest to _perked up_ as he has the entire night.

Six pairs of eyes are on them, then, all at once. Bucky’s, in particular, Steve notices, are the brightest blue he's ever seen, shining, almost animal-like, almost feral, in the low light. 

“It’s just a mix of English and Gaelic,” Steve says, before nodding at Bucky. “And a little bit of Romanian. Just what we picked up from Ma Barnes.”

“It’s our _patois,_ ” Grant adds, drawing out that last word, smirking as he does. Steve can’t tell if he’s trying to imitate Falsworth's posh English accent, or if he really thinks of it as a _patois,_ but either way, he reacts by rolling his eyes at his brother, making a face.

“Well, _‘scuse me,_ ” he says, nudging his brother in the side with his bony elbows. “Didn’t realize we in a grammar lecture, huh, fellas?”

“You’re just jealous that of the two of us, I’m the one who knows how to read,” Grant says back, and a roar of laughter fills the camp. Steve will take the ribbing, if it means that the Howlies will feel some sort of camaraderie; he’ll take it, if only for Bucky’s smile, from across the fire—something that's become increasingly-rare these days, something that seemed to have gone missing, after Azzano.  

\---

As they trek through snow-covered forests to get to their next mission—a freight train, carrying Hydra weapons and one Arnim Zola, the right-hand man of the Red Skull, of Johann Schmidt—Bucky, having grown ever-more-distant, ever-more-haunted, appears at camp one morning, a thick layer of bandage wrapped around the length of his palm.  

“Jeez, Sarge,” says Dumdum, eyes widening at Bucky's apparent injury. “What happened to your fuckin’ hand?”

Bucky blinks, slowly, as if waking from sleep, before shifting, easily, seamlessly, into something close to camaraderie. “Oh, this? I’m a dumbass and I cut my hand open shaving. Dropped my straight razor and tried to catch it, and, well. And everything.”

“Hell, Sarge, want me to take a look at it? Make sure it’s not infected?” Morita asks.

“No,” Bucky says, flinching, if only slightly. If only on instinct. “I—It’s fine. Really.”

Steve frowns, but he doesn’t say anything further. He doesn’t want to push it, not with how tense Bucky has been lately.

A few days later, they find shelter in a farmhouse on the border of France and Switzerland. This one isn't abandoned, and the people living within it look happy to see them. The Howlies are treated to quick showers and a hot meal, clean hands required. Even being forced to use basic table manners is a luxury, one that they all know is in no small part the result of their party including a French national _and_ no other than one _Captaine Amérique._

“Your hand looks better,” Falsworth says, nodding at Bucky as they sit down at the table to eat. He glances over at his left hand, and for a moment, it’s almost as if he forgets that he was hurt. For a moment.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, with a friendly shrug, “Guess it wasn’t as deep as I thought.”

There’s banter around the table as the men start giving Bucky shit, Grant included. Steve only catches only half of it, because as he sits across the table, an almost unbridgeable gulf between him and Bucky, all he can think to himself is that _something doesn’t seem right._  

\---

Steve wouldn’t be able to follow up with Bucky. Steve would never be able to sit down with Bucky and ask him what was on his mind. He would never even be able to ask Bucky what happened in that Hydra facility, what he was planning to do after the war, or even how he was _feeling._

Steve would never be able to follow up with Bucky. Not even if he wanted to.

On a snowy late-December afternoon in 1944, Bucky Barnes falls from a Hydra freight train, into a deep, deep ravine.  

And though Bucky is not blood-family, though he does not have the same bond as Grant and Steve, somehow, it still feels like something dies in Steve the second that he loses Bucky.  

\---

Maybe that’s why he volunteers to embark on a solo mission to disable the Valkyrie. Maybe that’s why Steve chooses to take the air mission, while Grant, Peggy and the rest of the Howlies beat back battalions of Hydra agents on the ground. Maybe Steve it's because Steve finds himself purposeless without the possibility of going home with Bucky.

Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe Steve’s sense of justice was strong, even stronger than the hidden strength of his svelte body. Maybe Steve knows that it's a sacrifice he can make, a sacrifice he _has_ to make, for the good of the world. Maybe he wants a chance for Grant to start a family with Peggy, and that the dangers of the Valkyrie mission would jeopardize that. Maybe Steve, like his father, was never meant to see the end of his respective world war.

Whatever the possibilities, whatever the endless maybes, Steve Rogers crash-lands the Valkyrie off the coast of Antarctica on February 5th, 1945.

As he feels the hypothermia kicking in, as he lays himself down to rest for the final time, Steve feels proud of himself: a kid from Brooklyn, little, even as strong as he is—as he was made to be—who might not be a perfect soldier, who might not even be a _great_ soldier, but is—was, soon enough—a _good man._

And maybe, just maybe, Steve thinks, as the water level around him begins rising, and his thoughts start going fuzzy, if there is another side, if he does get reunited with his Ma and his Da and all the long-gone elders from their old building, maybe there's a chance that he might be reunited with Bucky, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ain't called the blues for nothing, my friends. 
> 
> some notes:   
> \- chapter summary is from ["charlie boy" by the lumineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf7lQg1_vBM), which was the soundtrack to my favorite (now-deleted) captain america amv. rip.   
> \- i meant to post this chapter much earlier but daylight savings time ruined my life.   
> \- my chapter summaries are very off-the-cuff. i didn't plan them as well as i should have, but. there you go.
> 
> next: turn and face the strange (ch-ch-changes)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time may change you (you can't trace time)

Against all odds, Steve Rogers—stubborn, tenacious, _unbreakable_ Steve Rogers—gets up again.

Against all odds, Steve Rogers is _alive._

Steve Rogers is alive. But from that very moment he wakes, from that very moment that he’s breathing once more, nothing seems right.

Even as he lies there, coming back to himself, he notices that things are off. Waking up in a hospital bed isn’t anything new, not for Steve, but the comfort, the cleanliness, the relative _quiet—_ that’s wholly different. There’s a breeze coming in, but the familiar sounds of the city are noticeably absent. The only noise, the only evidence of life outside of his room, is the tinny voice of a radio announcer, narrating a baseball game that Steve’s _sure_ he’d heard about before. Something wasn’t right. _Nothing_ was right. He might not have been the one in blue tights, but Steve knew staged when he saw it.

And then there's something else. Beyond the strangeness of the hospital room he's in, Steve feels bigger. Even lying there, his body feels like there's just _more_ of it. Which turns out to be true. The second Steve shifts, moving to get up, moving to find his bearings, he realizes he’s much, _much_ taller than before he crashed the Valkyrie. As soon as he realizes this, his hands—still the same freckled peachy-beige shade that he remembers—shoot up to feel his own face. To his massive relief, Steve finds that he’s intact. Nose is still there. Lips are still there. He hasn’t become a crimson skull-Nazi. He was, even still, even in spite of all his stubbornness and secret jealousy and maybe-righteous rage, still a good man.

He’s, like his twin brother, _really_ a supersoldier, with the body to show for it. It just took him a little longer to grow into it, is all. Realization hits him at full force, and Steve touches his hand— _the big mitts he’s finally grown into,_ he thinks, a little bit sardonically—to his chest. It’s packed with muscle that he doesn’t recognize, but his heartbeat, the only strong thing about him, before Erksine, before the war, before _all of this,_ remains beating the same. That feeling of being right settles in his chest, and for a moment—for a brief, understated moment, Steve Rogers is at peace for the first time since his last birthday in Brooklyn with his twin brother and Bucky. If only it could have lasted longer. If only Steve's instincts weren't as sharp as they were.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that something isn't right. There's something artificial about the room that he's in, something sterile, cold, flimsy. Even the breeze floating in feels fake. Someone was trying very hard to make Steve feel comfortable, complacent. Like a mouse in a trap.

The door swings open, and in walks a woman—an SSR agent, or some facsimile of one. She smiles at him, emptily, and just like before, Steve can confirm: something isn't right.

"Afternoon," she says, her voice as sterile and hollow as the hospital room.

"Where am I?" Steve asks, cutting straight to the point.

“You’re in a recovery room," the SSR agent says. Then, after a brief pause, she clarifies, "In New York City.”

“Where am I?” Steve repeats, forceful, but level. He doesn't have time for false pleasantries, especially not when the last thing he remembers is crashing a plane into the Arctic ocean. “Really.”

The woman pauses for a moment, still smiling that empty smile. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The game. It’s from May 1941. I know, because there. I was at this game. _We_ were at this game,” Steve says, low. Carefully. “I’m going to ask you again. Where am I. And where the hell is my brother?”

That placid, sterile smile of hers falters, fading slightly, replaced with a deer-in-the-headlights look that Steve would recognize anywhere: she was taken aback. Something isn’t right. A roil of panic turns in the pit of Steve’s stomach as his basest survival reflexes begin to urge him—in no minor terms—to _run._ Just as she pulls out what looks like a tiny version of a Handie-Talkie, Steve, working on instinct, Steve barrels past the agent, running as quickly as his new, long legs will take him. He barrels past a small battalion of armored guards, taking advantage of the newfound bulk of his body. Once he's out of the doorway, he just keeps running, supersoldier-quick, past structures of glass and steel and crowds of men and women in strange-looking suits. Heartbeat pounding in his ears, Steve rushes towards the exit, running towards freedom, only to find that the outside world was just as confusing, bright, and breathtaking as the inside.

Because in front of Steve is, undeniably, impossibly, New York City. But it's New York that he's ever known.

The shock of colors and smells and sounds nearly brings Steve to collapse. His lungs shudder, as if on the brink of an attack, and only by dumb luck does he recognize that there are vehicles surrounding him. A serious-looking man in a trenchcoat steps out of one, and though Steve could run, though he probably should try to slip away, his body doesn't—can't—move. All he can do is open his mouth, now achingly dry, and repeat the question that had been all-consuming, practically:

"Where am I?"

The man walks towards him, carefully closing the gap between them, carefully showing that he has no intent to harm, but won't hesitate if Steve tries something funny. 

“You’ve been asleep,” says the man, “For almost seventy years.”

\---

Seventy years.

He’s been asleep for _seventy years._

It’s almost too much to take in. As he follows the man— _Nick Fury,_ director of the Strategic-Hazard-Intervention-Espionage-Logistics-Directorate, S.H.I.E.L.D. for short—into his office, Steve’s body is running almost entirely on autopilot.

Fury leads him back into the building, not saying a word as he does. Save for the clack of Fury's loafers on tile, the building is completely silent as he leads Steve to a glass elevator, hundreds of witnesses watching the spectacle of a supersoldier powerless to do anything but follow the man in front of him. Once they reach the top floor, Fury leads Steve to his enormous, well-lit office, and as new as the twenty-first century might be for Steve, this, at least, is familiar. Steve settles down in a char across from Fury, trying not to fall into a familiar, defiant slouch. Luckily, his new, big body makes it hard to do anything but sit up straight, given how much space he now takes up.

“I’m sure you have questions,” says Fury, leaning back in his chair.

“Seventy years,” Steve breathes out. He feels exhausted. It feels like he should be crying, but his body, for whatever reason, won’t let him. He feels the full weight of seventy years, seventy lost years, pressing down on him, not yet with enough pressure to break him down. But close. “God- _damn._ ”

To his credit, Fury looks sympathetic. Not in any obvious or traditional way of showing sympathy, of course, but in the way that long-serving army men with stone faces only could. In the way that Colonel Phillips was. Used to be. That drudges up another wave of hurt, of loss, of all the people who Steve left behind. Of all the people Steve lost. Peggy. The Howlies. Bucky. Grant.

_Grant._

“My brother,” Steve says, less a question than a demand to know. “What happened to my brother?” 

Fury doesn’t smile at him as he responds, but that barely-detectable sympathy seems far more obvious, now. “You know. That’s a funny story.”

Steve frowns, repeating himself with more force, this time. Something about the future made people not quite hear him, it seems. “What happened.”

Fury sighs a heavy sigh, and steeples his fingers, and Steve knows that means nothing good. 

“He disappeared. Not long after the founding S.H.I.E.L.D., too,” Fury says. “As the story goes, there were—disagreements. Political disagreements. Ethical disagreements. So, he resigned. That’s all I could tell you, given that Director Carter burned his resignation letter. Hasn't made a public appearance since. There are rumors he’s still around. Every few years, we get a few tips that he’s in some major city, working some vigilante beat. Couldn’t confirm it, though. Our last official records of him are from 1950. We haven’t been able to get eyes on him, and no one's found a body, so we're assuming he's still around, just staying far, far away from us.”

As crushing as the news of his brother's decision, it doesn't crush Steve to the brink of collapse. He isn't the only supersoldier who's been missing for the better part of a century. Something is oddly reassuring about hearing that, even after a crash-landing in the Arctic, even after being separated by thousands of miles of ocean and ice, Steve and Grant still fell on the same, rebellious wavelength. It's a bittersweet pill, Steve thinks, as he leans forward in his chair, thinking of nothing but reuniting with his brother. There's cold comfort in the fact that he can still, if faintly, feel his brother. It's a guarantee that, at the very least, Grant is still alive out there, somewhere. 

“Does anyone know about me? And him?" Steve asks, quietly, trying not to let the hurt of being lost and alone in a new century get to him. "The two of us?”

Fury shakes his head. “The truth of both Rogers twins receiving and surviving the serum has been one of the closest-held secrets in US history. The only people in the world who know and can confirm that truth are you, Director Carter, and me.”

“And Grant,” Steve adds, looking Fury square in the eye.

“Yeah,” Fury says, and something about his expression, flat as it may be, looks bemused. Steve tries not to clench his jaw at it, tries to keep his expression level. He doesn’t like when he can’t read people. He doesn’t like not knowing if he can trust people. Especially now that he's alone in a new century. “Yeah, your brother, too.”

Steve sighs, feeling wrung-out and exhausted. Seventy years of sleep was too much. Seventy years of sleep was not enough. "So, what now?"

"Well, I have a proposition for you," Fury says, leaning forward, almost conspiratorially. Maybe Steve would have gotten along with a young version of him, in another lifetime. Hell, maybe Grant did. But some gut instinct deep in Steve tells him that he won't like what Fury is going to offer. "Your brother laid down the shield almost sixty years ago. The world's changed, sure, but some things—well. Some things don't change much, even in the better part of sixty years. We could use a guy with your skill set in the world. We could use a guy who can do the real dirty work in the morning and spend the afternoon giving people hope."

"What are you saying?" Steve asks, even though he knows. He knows what Fury is saying. He knows what's being proposed. He just needs to hear it, straight. And Fury seems to know this, from the way that he quirks his eyebrow, just so.

"What I'm saying is," Fury starts, "Take up the shield. Take on the mantle. The world needs Captain America, Steve. And I think that you know just as well as I do that you're the only person who can take on that mantle."

From the way Fury is looking at him, Steve knows he's doing something with his face that Ma Rogers would have described as _painfully defiant_. He hates the suggestion that he's just a replacement for his brother. He hates the implication that if he doesn't do this, the world will be worse for it. He hates feeling like has no choice. But more than anything, more than all of that, Steve hates how right Fury is. He hates himself for knowing that there's no way he isn't going to pick up his brother's shield.

Fury continues on, pushing past Steve's willful, futile, self-defiance. "What do you say? Wanna spend the night thinking on it?"

"No. No, I don't think I do," Steve says. He heaves out a deep sigh, and though he doesn't feel any happier, he at least feels less unmoored, now that he has a purpose. "I have my decision, and I can make it now. I'll do it. But not for you. Not for this. For the world. For Grant."

For Bucky.

He would have wanted Steve to do good, like he always knew Steve could do. Everything aches anew, all of a sudden.

Fury leans back in his chair, seemingly unaware of Steve's inner crisis. He seems to be mulling over Steve's decision, as if he, himself, is unsure about Steve's decision. Eventually, he sits up, nods, and stands, holding out his hand to shake. "Glad to have you onboard, then. Let me introduce you to your handler."

They leave Fury's office together, traveling across the hall, to another, smaller office. Fury raps on the door, and within seconds, it opens, its sole occupant quickly making his way into the hall. “This is Agent Coulson,” Fury says, nodding to an eager-looking middle-aged man. He’s watching Steve carefully, with a familiar blue-eyed eagerness that Steve can’t quite place.

“Hi. You can call me Phil,” he manages, shaking Steve’s hand with a firm grip that belies his everyman appearance. Coulson is looking at him with the barely-restrained excitement of someone who is clearly meeting their hero. “ _Big_ fan.”

“I’m not—” Steve starts, until he realizes, he _is._ Grant is gone. So, now, he _is_. “Sorry. I, uh. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure to meet _you,_ ” says Coulson, staring Steve straight in the eye with an intensity that makes Steve feel like he’s getting simultaneously put on a pedestal and sized up, all at once. It's going to take some getting used to, being at eye-height or taller than most powerful men, and embodying the role of Captain America. 

Fury nods at the both of them. He turns, to make his leave parting with, “You take care of him, Phil.”

Coulson nods, eagerly. Practically saluting the guy. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, uh,” Steve starts, shoving his hands in his pockets, trying to hunch himself down as small as he could be, in that new, supersoldier-sized frame of his. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what he _could_ say. His life's just been turned entirely upside-down. There were so many things to chew over. The fact that he _has_ a life, for one.

“Hey. It’s been a long day. And it’s not even noon,” says Coulson, clearly sensing that Steve is overwhelmed. “How ‘bout I get you some breakfast?”

And that, Steve thinks, is the best thing he's heard all day. It's heartening that somehow, beyond all odds, Coulson, this odd, blue-eyed, strangely-familiar man, seems to know exactly what Steve needs.

\---

An hour into living in it, and Steve doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to living in the New York City of the future. Especially not when everything is so loud and busy and _electric._ Coulson takes him to a little donut shop for breakfast, where even there, everything is technicolored and digitized and a little bit too fast-paced _._ Even the donuts were something to behold. One of the ones he gets is _bright blue._ Bucky would have probably loved the future, with all its bright lights and buzzing, hopeful newness.

“ _Goddamn,_ ” he murmurs to himself, slipping into his twin-language, fully aware that he is the only remaining speaker of an ancient tongue. “ _Made it to the goddamn twenty-first century, all alone. What a fuckin’ irony.”_  

“What was that you said?” Coulson asks, coming out of nowhere and scaring the everloving shit out of Steve before he’s had a chance to dig into his breakfast. Coulson winces, looking apologetic as he settles into the booth. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I—uh. Sorry," Steve says, blushing, now that he's been caught. "Just, uh. Talking to myself.”

“Oh,” Coulson says, curiously. “What language was that?”

“I, uh,” Steve starts, looking away. “It’s a—dialect.”

“Really? Didn’t realize New York had dialects,” Coulson says, handing Steve his coffee. Steve takes a sip and hums. It’s nothing special, but by Depression standards, hell, by Army ration standards, it’s the liquor of the gods.

“Not from all of New York. It was, uh. Really, really local. Popped up in my building, ‘cause we all lived together," Steve says, and it's not a lie, but it's not fully the truth, either. "Gaelic and English and a little Romanian.”

“Huh,” Coulson says, “Interesting _patois.”_

Steve is taken aback by Coulson's use of language. “Yeah. It—it is.”

Steve doesn’t want to talk about his and his brother’s _patois_ anymore. Especially not when the only person who ever called it a _patois_ other than Coulson was Grant. He doesn’t even want to talk about the future anymore. It hurts too much, thinking that he’d somehow gotten bigger and stronger and healthier and lived to the future, when everyone else in his life hadn’t gotten that same chance. So, with that, he sits there in silence, slowly sipping his coffee and eating his half-dozen donuts, trying hard not to lash out at Coulson for staring at him like he’s some sort of museum exhibit.  

Eventually, Steve and Coulson both finish up their breakfasts, coffees and all. They clean up after themselves, silently, and make their way to what, ostensibly, will be Steve’s new home—a new apartment S.H.I.E.L.D. has gotten for him, in a new version of Brooklyn. It’s about four times the size of the old Rogers family apartment, with three less people occupying it. Steve wants nothing more than to settle into it. Alone.

Luckily, Coulson seems to get the hint. He looks antsy, as much as he also looks like he doesn’t ever want to leave.

“You know—” Coulson starts, as he makes his way out the door, “You can call me. Any time you want, okay?”

Steve nods. They'd given him a tiny, pocket-sized telephone. Steve had no intentions to use it. “Thank you.”

“Of course. I mean, between you and me, Cap—it’s not like I have any other friends,” Coulson says, awkwardly, and if it's a joke, it's a bad one. It's a non-joke to which Steve bites his tongue. Because as much as he wants to tell Coulson that they’re _not_ friends, as much as he wants to tell him that Coulson doesn’t _compare_ to his friends, the two of them really are two peas in a pod. Because as much as Steve hates to admit it, it’s not like he has any other friends, either. Not in this bright, brave new world.

Coulson grins at Steve as he leaves, waving a little friendly wave. There’s something unsettling, something interesting, something _there,_ to him, something that Steve _just_ can’t put his finger on. And though he tries to shake it off, though he tries not to think about it too much, it stays with Steve, just at the edge of his mind, as he explores his big, empty apartment—as he settles into his little, lonely life, at the beginning of the new century.  

\---

Living a life in the land and time of plenty is, in ways, is more challenging than surviving the Depression. Steve might be wealthier than a king these days, what, with all the backpay and his brother’s royalties falling to him, but none of it means anything without anyone to share it with. None of it means anything now that he’s all on his own.

Filling his days as the last of a dying generation is the hardest part. Brooklyn is more packed with people than it has ever been before, but to Steve, it’s a ghost town. Everything looks the same, but nothing looks the same, at the same time. All the people— _his_ people—are long gone or old and gray, having forgotten him in the almost-century since. The echoes of his old life haunt Steve; even the _woosh_ of the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge, seemingly, is different.

He manages. Barely, but Steve manages. He works out until his enhanced body gives out, until his knuckles are bloody, until he literally can’t stand up anymore. And then he sleeps. He sleeps until his body won’t let him sleep anymore. He draws when he can. Or, he tries to. Inspiration hardly comes to him, now that his muse is long-dead and gone.

The struggle of continuing on makes the alien invasion—an honest-to-God, _actual_ alien invasion—a mission, at the very least. With an Asgardian power play bringing aliens to bear on New York, Steve gets to step into the role of _Captain America_ for the first time. A new battle means that Steve finally, for the first time in this lonely new century, gets a purpose.  

\---

Once he’s over the shock of the whole _literal, actual alien invasion_ thing, it becomes very clear to Steve that, when distilled down to its requisite parts, war doesn’t change. When it comes down to it, whether it be at the hands of men or gods or beings from outer space, the terror of an invasion can always be reduced to a need for domination, for force, for exploitation, for power.

Even with the inclusion of alien tech and portals to other worlds, war doesn’t change. The power-hungry remain. Back-alley bullies, Asgardian authoritarians, Steve knows the ropes. 

It’s the _losses_ that Steve always has trouble coping with. 

\---

When Natasha—a redheaded superspy with a dry wit and battle-efficiency that Steve admires—tells him Coulson has been stabbed in the chest, Steve feels his stomach drop out. He’s dealt with losses before. Of course, he has. He was the tactical mind behind the Howling Commandos. Of course, he’s dealt with losses.

But experience like that never makes things any easier.

Especially not when Coulson was the closest thing that Steve had to a friend in this brave new century.

Captain America makes a speech on television, memorializing those who were lost in the Chitauri invasion. Captain America mourns, bravely. Publicly. As a leader, a figure to look towards, in the devastating aftermath of the Battle of New York. 

All the while, Steve Rogers mourns, silently. Alone. Lonelier, perhaps, than he’s ever been.

It’s during this period of immense mourning that Steve, having worked until the brink of collapse, stumbles to his too-big, too-lonely apartment, only to realize, only to sense, he’s not the only one there. Lonely as he might be, he’s not _alone._ He grabs his shield from its spot next to the door and, in one swift movement, tosses it, aiming straight at the figure standing in his living room.

“Hey now,” says the figure, as he dodges the shield, nigh-effortlessly. The voice is familiar, achingly, mournfully so, almost, but Steve can’t quite place it. “Is that how you treat all your guests?”

The figure moves to dislodge Steve’s shield from the wall, moving carefully, slowly, his posture open and intentions clear. That doesn’t make Steve feel any better. Neither does recognizing the face in front of him, once the figure gets closer.  

“Coulson?” Steve asks, as he takes back his shield. Familiar face or not, something isn’t right. Something doesn’t _sound_ right. Steve falls into a defensive crouch, fully ready to take on whoever it is behind that friendly visage.  

“Not Phil,” he says. As if Steve doesn’t already know that. “Put your shield down. I’m not Loki, either. It’s okay.”

But the more this stranger speaks, the more it bothers Steve. Something about his voice is _intimately_ familiar. It sounds like Coulson’s voice, to an extent, but there's something else familiar about the way that this unfamiliar intruder carries his words.  

“You say you’re not Phil, and you’re not Loki,” Steve says, still taking an abundance of caution. “Who the hell are you, then? And more important, are you looking for a fight, or you looking for a friend?”

“Well, a friend would be nice. But I can do you one better,” says Not-Phil, looking somehow both excited and damn-near tears. Before Steve can say anything, Not Phil’s features shimmer with an eerie electronic glow, and he’s pulling his own face off like some sort of mind-bending technological veil. In its place, where Phil Coulson’s features once were, are ones far more unexpected, but far, far more welcome to see. 

“Grant?” Steve asks, barely above a whisper.

“Hey, asshole,” says Steve’s double, in that ever-familiar voice. So _that’s_ what that familiarity was.

Other than his long hair and unkempt beard, Grant looks not a day older than when Steve last saw him almost a century ago. Steve can hardly believe it. He hears his shield clatter to the floor, and Grant laughs, saying something about how clumsy Steve has always been. As if taking that as a sign, Grant moves even closer to Steve, his arms open, eyes glistening with what must be seventy years’ worth of worry—

And then that’s when Steve slugs his brother—his doppelganger, his last remaining family, and his very best friend—clean in the face.

“Ow! Jesus _fuck_ ,” Grant groans, hands flying to his face. He pulls back, quickly, like he always would, when the two of them would get in more trouble than they were worth. Miraculously, there’s no blood, but even with the serum, Grant’s going to be sporting a wallop of a shiner soon enough. “Shit. Fuck. Okay. Fine. Okay. I probably fucking deserve that one, huh?”

“Yeah you fucking do, you fucking ass,” Steve manages, barely choking back tears, before he throws his arms around his brother, his real, flesh-and-blood brother, wrapping him up in a big, tight hug. Tight enough to hold onto him and never, ever let him go; tight enough so that he _knows_ he’s really, really there.  

Grant doesn’t say a word, instead, returning the hug, his grip just as tight. From the way his chest rises and falls, Steve knows that Grant is tearing up. If Steve cries, too, he does not recognize it—his heart feels far too _full_ to think about such small things.  

“I missed you so much, bud. I missed you so, so fucking much,” Grant murmurs into Steve’s shoulder, his breath shuddering.

“I missed you, too,” Steve manages.  

“I never gave up on you,” Grant says, his voice strained, fragile, _vulnerable._ If there was one thing Grant didn’t like being, it was vulnerable. At least, not openly. Hearing his brother like this makes him want to _weep._ “Never. Not for a second. Everyone said there was no chance you were still alive, but I knew. I could feel you. I _knew._ ”

“Well, I’m here now,” Steve says, sniffling. “And I can promise you, I’m—I’m _me._ I’m real. And I’m not letting you run off again. At least not until that stab wound of yours gets better.”

Grant laughs. “Just like old times, huh?”

“Yeah. Just like old times,” Steve says, fondly. “Oh, and Grant?”

“Yeah?”

“That beard is the fucking worst.”

Grant breaks out into a grin. Even his _teeth_ are the same as they were before Steve crashed the Valkyrie into the arctic. Steve shouldn’t have been so emotionally-invested in his brother’s dental hygiene, but there he was, trying not to cry about Grant’s teeth.

“Yeah,” Grant laughs, looking a little bashful, in the way that he only was in front of Steve. “Yeah, I really let myself go, huh?”

Steve, jokingly, makes a hand motion, signaling, _maybe. So-so._ “Tell you what, lemme give you a shave after we get some food, how about?”

Grant smiles, dabbing his eyes with the back of his hand, still looking a little weepy. “You promise?”

Steve, too, has to wipe his eyes, but for the first time, it doesn't leave him feeling helpless. “Yeah, Grant. I promise.” 

\---

That first night back together, they speak in their own tongue for the bulk of the night. They talk about everything: Grant’s travels over the past seventy years, how New York City has changed since their childhood, the memories they made with the Commandos, the fates of Howard and Peggy. Eventually, the topic changes to new friends, particularly, to Phil Coulson.

“ _So, I gotta know_ ,” Steve says eventually, in between bites of his fifth piece of pizza. “ _Is Phil Coulson a real guy?”_

Grant laughs, grabbing another slice for himself. “ _Yeah, yeah, he’s real._ ”

“No shit?” Steve asks, in standard, non-Rogers twin English.

“Yeah, no shit,” Grant says, in English, in turn, before switching back. “ _Met him back in the nineties. We both were trying to help people after the Sokovian Civil War. He’s mostly S.H.I.E.L.D.’s man inside the FBI now, except when Fury assigns him to the most interesting, most-important cases. The two of 'em are real close. It was a big ask, getting him to let me to be your handler. I owe him a lot.”_

Steve would love to meet this Coulson, to know the man that Grant trusts enough to ask for a favor. “ _Where is he now?_ ”

“ _Probably sipping mixed drinks on a beach in Tahiti,_ ” Grant says with a shrug. He takes a big, messy bite of his pizza, and continues speaking, as he chews. _God,_ Steve missed being able to know when it was alright to talk with his mouth open. “ _I told him to take the vacation he deserved. Even paid for it a little, too._ ”

 _“That’s real nice of you_.”

“ _Yeah, well_ ,” Grant says, “ _I was gonna find you one way or another. Might as well’ve given a friend a vacation in the process_.”

That's Steve's brother alright, who picks his battles, who shrinks from attention, but who was given the Captain America title, anyway. It's almost unsurprising that Grant would fuck off for seventy years. And _God,_ was Steve glad he got him back. 

A silence falls between them, not the first of that night, and not the last of the night, either. But it's one that Steve wants to fill—needs to fill—with a question, something that has gained substantial importance, now that Grant has reunited himself with Steve.

“Hey, so,” Steve says, in English. Something about the topic he wants to broach feels serious, so serious, almost, that he doesn’t want to use their twin-made tongue. “I don’t know if you heard. But—uh. Fury suggested that I move. Not anywhere too far, but he thinks I should move to D.C., because, I dunno. He thinks that I might be better off over there. Maybe it's, you know. Healthier.”

Grant is quiet for a moment, his eyes fixed on a single spot on Steve’s carpet. When he speaks, he’s quiet, and his tone is so level it’s almost a monotone. “I didn’t hear about that, no.”

“I mean—” Steve starts, also, somehow, finding the carpet very, very interesting. “I own this apartment. I can come back home if it doesn’t work out. And I will, probably, there's no way that I'm going to move away from home permanently, but—I dunno. I think getting outta New York for a while will be good for me.”

“Well—I mean—” Grant starts, his verbal tics echoing Steve’s own. He sighs, looking up from the carpet, up at Steve, as if he finally worked up the courage to. “If you think that you gotta get outta here, then hell, Steve. You should pack up your shit and go the second you can. Don’t think that just ‘cause I’m back, that means you’re stuck here. Hell, I’ve been a nomad for the past sixty or so years. I’m the last person who’d stop you from moving.”

“That’s the thing,” Steve says, and he knows what he’s about to ask is a long shot. But he has to ask it. “I—do you want to come with me? I mean, you don’t have to move in with me. You’ve got your own life, being an international man of mystery, and everything, but I just—”

“—don’t wanna lose me again,” Grant says. It’s not a question. It’s not speculation. It’s fact. He _knows._ They both do. The tension that Grant so-quickly accumulated in his shoulders ebbs. In seeing his brother relax, so does Steve, mirroring Grant, down to the teary little smile that he knows they share.  

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Grant says, “I mean. I’m not opposed. New York hasn’t been the same since I lost you, and D.C. is fine. It’s been a while since I lived there, but—I dunno. Maybe it’s time I settled down for a while. Got a fresh start.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks, feeling hopeful.

“Yeah,” Grant replies, his tone sounding like he feels the same.

“Okay,” is all Steve can say in response. “I—great.”

Another silence falls between the twins, one that neither of them fully wants to acknowledge, one that they both know would get far too emotional and vulnerable if they actually _did_ _address it._ That Rogers stubbornness, that tendency to leave things unspoken, until forced otherwise, Steve knew, had the potential to be dangerous, especially now that they both were six-foot-and-change and stronger than any human had the right to be. But for the time being, that Rogers stubbornness, the willingness to stretch out silences, is a relief.

“Well,” Grant says eventually, not breaking the silence, not exactly. “I’m pretty beat.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too,” Steve says, and he is. It's been a long, long night for him, in all the best kinds of ways. “But that don’t mean we’re not getting rid of that ugly mess you’ve got on your face. That’s what we’re doin’, first thing tomorrow.”

“Damn,” Grant jokes, rubbing the fuzz on his chin. “I thought you’d forget.”

Steve snorts. “You wish.”

“Yeah, well,” Grant says, shaking his head, leaving it at that as they both make their way to their respective rooms.

Just as Steve is about to settle in for the night, Grant pokes his head out of one of two spare rooms. It's no longer spare, not with Grant home, even if they _do_ both end up moving to Washington. And that makes Steve feel a whole lot better about the D.C. proposition.   

“Steve?” he calls out.

Steve turns around, settling against the doorframe of his own bedroom. “Yeah?”

Grant looks like he’s struggling for the words. Eventually, he settles on the simple, the understated.

“It’s—uh," Grant says, rubbing his chin, like it's a nervous tic. Steve almost feels bad for wanting to shave it. Almost. "It’s, uh. It's good to have you back.” 

Steve nods, and his reply is just as understated as his twin brother's.

“Yeah. Yeah, Grant,” he says. “It’s good to have you back, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp, this is the halfway point for the fic!! how exciting. i'm excited for it, excited to let it unfold. thank you to everyone who has commented, left kudos, and bookmarked/subscribed so far. i'm quite excited to share the rest of this story, and i hope it lives up to expectations and excitement. 
> 
> anyway, some notes:  
> \- there is no way in the world that this is the first fic that's referenced ["changes" by david bowie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPPSu0vaNWA) re: steve and the ice. i recognize that. am i gonna keep it? of course i am.  
> \- before they were called [walkie-talkies, handheld CV radios were called "Handie-Talkies,"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkie-talkie#History) for whatever reason. so steve defaults to that.  
> \- who remembers when [dunkin donuts had the promotional donuts/drinks when the first avenger came out? I DO IT IS ME](https://news.dunkindonuts.com/blog/dunkin-donuts-unveils-delicious-new-menu-items-inspiredd-by-captain-america:-the-first-avenger)  
> \- anyway, that's why steve has his first meal in the twenty-first century in a dunkin' donuts. because of a dumb promo that like, four people (including myself) remember.   
> \- consider grant-disguised-as-coulson a tribute to my favorite avengers (2012)-era theory: "coulson is the vision." i was a champion for that theory long after it was thoroughly disproven, much to the embarrassment of all my friends.
> 
> next up: mister rogers (and mister rogers) go to washington.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in the district (alone, tonight)

The Rogers boys move to Washington, D.C. about a month after their reunion. Or, rather, Steve moves to Washington, D.C. a month after they reunite. Grant moves in a week and a half later, just to keep himself flying under the radar.

It’s a strange move, in that it’s not really a move. Not really. Steve doesn’t have much by means of furniture or clothing or dishes or _anything, really,_ in his New York apartment, so everything but his wardrobe stays in New York. Grant, similarly, has been living out of a suitcase for seventy years. So, it’s less a move, and more a temporary change of pace.

But they settle into it. Together, in a new city, in a new century, the Rogers twins find new routines.  

\--- 

One of the Rogers twins’ shared routines is a morning run. They don’t run together. They don't even go running on the same days, not when the truth of the _both_ of them existing has been erased from public memory. But it’s a routine. It’s stability. It’s what they both need.

On a warm spring morning in March, Steve is just finishing up his morning run when a man comes up to him—a stranger, in the way that he's an early-morning running regular, but they haven't spoken to each other before. Regardless, the man is sweaty, out of breath, but friendly.

“No _on your left_ today?” the guy asks, between exhausted-sounding breaths.

Steve blinks at that, frowning, more out of confusion than anything. “What?”

“You know, usually, when you—” the man starts, then, suddenly looking embarrassed, he shakes his head. “Forget it. Sorry. Thought I’d introduce myself, finally. Sam Wilson.”

“Steve Rogers,” says Steve, extending his hand. They shake, and Sam looks like he’s trying very, very hard not to be _giddy._ “But you, uh. You probably knew that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I did. ‘Course, it’s not like there’s anyone else out here lapping me like it’s high school track,” Sam says, and Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek, given the truth. Instead, Steve focuses on the embroidered crest on Sam’s sweatshirt: Air Force. Not uncommon in D.C., but Steve still finds himself drawn to Sam, in the way that only comes through a similar experience, through that military brotherhood.

That, and perhaps because of the strange, interconnected feelings he gets because of _actual_ brotherhood.

“How long?” Steve asks, nodding less at Sam’s sweatshirt than the implication of what it represents.

“Two tours,” Sam answers quickly, as if he’s heard that question a couple hundred times before. He probably has. “It’s been a while now, but man. It’s good to be home.”

“I feel that,” Steve laughs. And he does, in ways. It feels better to be sleeping in a warm bed with a roof over his head than it does to be sleeping in a tent in some snowy camp in the Swiss Alps. But home isn't a thing Steve can go back to, not exactly.

“Bet you miss the old days, huh?” Sam asks, and maybe if it were anyone else, Steve would have ended their conversation there. But Sam has a good energy about him. He can tell why his brother must have gravitated towards him.

“Well, things aren't so bad,” Steve says, with a shrug, because other than the whole, _losing everyone in his life but his brother,_ it’s true. The twenty-first century is _great_. “Food's a lot better. We used to boil everything. No polio is good. Internet? _So_ helpful. I've been on there a lot, you know. Trying to catch up.”

“Well, hey, if I can be so bold to suggest, you gotta check out Marvin Gaye, 1972, _Trouble Man_ soundtrack. Everything you've missed jammed into one album,” Sam says, sagelike.

Steve nods, pulling out a small notebook and pen from the pocket of his athletic pants. He wastes no time in jotting the name down, just one more thing to catch up on from his time in the ice. “It’s on the list.”

Sam smiles up at him, and for the first time since he and Grant left New York, Steve feels like he exists as _Steve,_ not just an on-call supersoldier. He’s excited to one day, meet Sam again, and run with Sam again. He hopes that one day, Grant can run alongside them, too.

But that's for another time; a future time. For now, Steve needed to get something for breakfast.

“Well, I’d better get going,” Steve says, already feeling the gnawing of supersoldier-sized hunger in his stomach.

“Right. Well, it was, uh. Nice meeting, man,” Sam says, with a little wave. There’s a little gap between his two front teeth that Steve can’t help but be charmed by. No wonder Grant apparently spends his free time bullying this guy into noticing him. “See you around.”

Steve smiles at that. “Yeah. Yeah, you probably will.”

\---

“Hey asshole!” Steve calls out, the second he’s back in the apartment. “You around? I got donuts!”

“Yeah grandpa, I’m around, no need to yell. You’re gonna wake the neighbors,” Grant says, making his way out of his bedroom. He’s wearing sweats and a ratty old t-shirt reading _BERN 2000,_ and Steve has half the mind to ask where his brother gets off making fun of _him_ for being old, while wearing t-shirts that would be legally-eligible to _drive._

“Better not be able to wake the neighbors,” Steve says, biting into an old-fashioned donut. “We paid good fuckin’ money for S.H.I.E.L.D. to make this place secure, if I have people listening in on my conversations with you, I’m gonna be pretty fuckin’ pissed off.”

Grant snorts at that, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just grabs two donuts from the box, stuffing half of a jelly-filled one into his mouth before he’s even made his way to the coffeemaker.  

“So,” Steve says, as he chews through the rest of his old-fashioned. Apt donut for him, he thinks. “On your left _,_ huh?”

Grant might have almost a century’s worth of experience on him, but Steve knows his brother. He knows what Grant looks like when he’s trying not to look embarrassed. He knows what it looks like when Grant Rogers has a _crush._

“Shut up,” says Grant, not looking at Steve. He doesn’t have to. They both know what’s going on.

“Uh-uh,” Steve says, grinning around a Boston crème. “You ever actually _talk_ to the guy, or do you just use the fantastic gifts that the serum gave us to bully him, huh?”

“We’re—I’m getting there,” Grant replies, which Steve knows to mean, other than small talk and friendly harassment, his brother is still at the stage where he's _pining from afar._

“Well, don’t wait too long,” Steve says, “Otherwise I’m gonna start making moves on him for you.”

“I, uh. Might take you up on that,” Grant says, “I mean, my track record doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. _You_ know how it went.”

And Steve _does._ Grant told him all about it, on that night they reunited. Grant's marriage with Peggy ended in a messy breakup that threatened to turn into an international relations incident, the transformation of the SSR into S.H.I.E.L.D., and, among other things, the fine china and Stark family loyalties divided up in the divorce.  

“You’ll figure it out,” Steve says, in between licking sugary remnants off his fingers. “Anyway. Anything fun happen while I was gone?”

“Well, I mopped the floors, finished the laundry, and _finally_ fixed that squeaky hinge on that one cabinet, so, yeah, I’d say so,” Grant says, as he pours his coffee. No sugar, no creamer. Just the way the Rogers boys liked it. “Oh. And Nat’s on her way to pick you up for a mission.”

“Damn,” Steve sighs. He looks over to his brother, making the biggest, friendliest doe eyes he can possibly manage. “You wouldn’t wanna take it, would you?”

“Nice try, but you know I can’t. Took the last one. And you _know_ we’ve gotta be careful if we’re gonna keep doing switching off like this,” Grant says, sipping at his coffee. “Besides, I’ve got some important things to do.”

“Like?”

Grant shrugs. “Maybe I’ll pay that cute runner guy a visit. Maybe I’ll go out and buy a book and read it in the park. Maybe I’ll leak a story to the _Post._ Who knows.”

“Ugh. Leave a guy alone for a couple decades, and all of a sudden, he gets all secretive and flighty. You’re the worst.”

“I know,” Grant says, faux-sarcasm dripping from his words. He nabs another donut, the last one from the box. “Now, better suit up. Your ride’s gonna be here soon.” 

\---

This mission that Steve has been assigned to is a simple one: Georges Batroc, at the top at INTERPOL’S Red Notice, has taken hostages. _S.H.I.E.L.D._ hostages. Steve and Natasha are meant to neutralize Batroc, with Brock Rumlow and Jack Rollins' their STRIKE units onhand as backup. Steve doesn’t like Brock, not really, but he’s a familiar face, someone who Steve knows well enough to direct in battle.

Natasha, though. Steve really likes her. She’s prickly and smarmy and doesn’t open up easily, which is exactly why Steve likes Natasha. And she likes him. Somehow, after the Battle of New York, they became thick as thieves. In fact, Natasha is the only person, the only Avenger, to stay in contact with him after Steve's move to Washington. Save for Fury and his brother, anyway.

“Did you do anything fun Saturday night?” she asks him. Natasha isn’t one for small-talk, but Steve is willing to humor her, if for no other reason, because he's curious to see what she's really wanting.

“Well, all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so,” Steve replies, cocky. “No, not really.”

She shrugs. “You know, if you ask Kristen out—Kristen, you know, from Statistics—she'd probably say yes.”

“Nat,” Steve says, as they begin to approach the drop.

“Steven,” she echoes.

“No,” he says, and the hull is opening up, now, thankfully, putting this conversation to an end, at least, for now.

“Why?” she calls out, through the rush of the atmosphere around them.

“I’m too busy!” is all Steve yells, though they both know that’s not true. And with that, before Natasha can say anything else, Steve jumps—knowing that this conversation isn’t over, not really—but leaving a plane, sans-parachute, is a welcome way out from it.

\---

Freeing the hostages and neutralizing Batroc is easy enough. If Rumlow seems a little bit too prepared for this mission, and a little bit _too_ excited to use excessive force, Steve chooses to address it later.

It’s _Natasha,_ the only person that Steve can really call a friend in this new century, that he really wants to address. She’s scrubbing S.H.I.E.L.D. computers, downloading information that they both know she shouldn’t be squirreling away. When he catches her, something drops in his stomach, a feeling of betrayal that Steve probably should have expected, coming from a super-spy, but nonetheless, it hurts.

In her defense, Natasha tells Steve it’s _her_ mission—directive from Fury, Scout’s honor—and that, somehow, makes him feel worse. Steve doesn’t like the feeling of being out of the know. And more so, he doesn’t like the feeling of betrayal—even if it's just a couple little white lies, a slight bending of the truth.  

\---

Coming home from the mission, something feels—off. Unsettled. Whether it’s because of the mission itself, because of his post-mission confrontation with Fury, or because Natasha’s repeated attempts at matchmaking finally start getting to him, Steve feels lonely. More so, he feels like he doesn’t want to be alone.

Grant isn’t home when, in the late morning, Steve gets back to Washington. On their shared fridge calendar, in Grant’s neat, particular handwriting, is an explanation: _12pm, visit Peggy._

It seems fitting for Grant to be visiting Peggy, given Steve’s mood. Natasha is just as exhausted as he is, no doubt, and he's still a little annoyed with her, so Steve foregoes asking if she would like to get coffee with him, while she's still in the area. Sam, the nice guy from his run, the one who’d mentioned something about the VA, is probably at work. And there was _no way_ that Steve will even consider asking Fury out to coffee. It'd be just a step below asking Colonel Phillips to coffee. With his small social circle exhausted, Steve decides to go to the place he always goes when he's feeling lonely.

Steve, with his baseball cap tucked low on his head, heads straight to the Smithsonian.

\---

It's always strange, walking through a permanent display on his brother—and him, now that he’s donned the mantle of _Captain—_ but Steve isn’t at the Smithsonian for _those_ memories. He isn’t even at the Smithsonian for the memories of Peggy, as much as he loves her, albeit, less than his brother does. No, Steve is there for someone else. Someone who, unlike Grant or Peggy, he can’t visit in the flesh. Not anymore.

Steve, like a pilgrim to a holy site, is there to pray his devotions one single, near-forgotten soul: James Buchanan Barnes, 1917-1945. With his portrait—beautiful, though not nearly as beautiful as Bucky was in the flesh—occupying an almost wall-sized panel on his sacrifice, Bucky almost looks saint-like, too.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, audible to no one but himself. “It’s me again.”

\---

How long he stays at the Smithsonian, Steve doesn’t know. He stays there long enough for the crowd to start waning, but not long enough for the night guard, Stan, to ask him to leave. He’s learned, having gone to the Smithsonian enough times, on days like this, when it’s best to make his way home.

The trip back to the apartment goes by in a haze, and though he realizes his phone is buzzing in his pocket, Steve does not check his messages. He just needs to be alone with his thoughts, at least, for another few blocks, before he tries to face the world again.

“Hey,” is what Grant says to him, as soon as he’s through the front door. Grant, too, looks exhausted, but he’s clearly trying to keep his tone positive. Upbeat, even. He can feel his brother's sorrow, no doubt. Steve can feel Grant's, too. 

“Hey,” Steve sighs, his tone far heavier, far more morose, than he could have anticipated. Though he knows he should probably take a shower, or take an early bedtime, Steve just slumps on the couch, tipping his head to stare at the ceiling. 

“How’d the mission go?” Grant asks, padding his way over. There are two mugs of coffee in his hands, but Steve doesn't want to consider eating or drinking right now.

“Okay,” Steve answers, though both of them know that’s not the issue at hand. For either of them.  

“ _Steve_ ,” Grant says, his voice stern, exhausted, but not without kindness, or, at the very least, sympathy. “Did you go to the Smithsonian again?”

Steve frowns, realizing that it probably looks like a pout. Whatever. “Yeah.”

“Come on, Steve,” Grant sighs, plopping on the couch next to him. He sets the two coffees down, and they both know that those coffees are doomed to be forgotten the second he does. “You know it’s not healthy to go there every time you’ve got a second of free time. We’ve talked about this.”

“I just—" Steve starts, sitting up straight, so he can look his brother in the eye. "I miss him, Grant. I miss him so much.”

“I know,” Grant says, pulling him into an awkwardly-placed hug. The couch made it hard, but Grant manages. “I know. But he wouldn’t want you to be miserable. And I know that _you_ know that, too.”

And _that_ does it for Steve. For whatever reason, it does, undoing the stopped-up dam that Steve had pushed his emotions back behind. Grant’s hug seems to dislodge the tidal wave of messy, confusing emotions that Steve's been working through, and out of nowhere, surprising even himself, Steve, as if on instinct, began to cry. 

“Hey, come on, don’t cry,” Grant says, “I just came back from seeing my geriatric ex-wife in her dying days, all alone in the big, sad, empty house that her piece-of-shit kids never visit her in. We can’t _both_ be upset today. That’s not fair to either of us.”

But that doesn't stop Steve. Nor does it stop Grant from hugging him. Instead, Steve manages to cry out all his sadness, letting his tears run their course until he feels, if only barely, better. 

“Hey,” Grant says, butting his shoulder against Steve's. “You were saying earlier that Cute Jogger Guy keeps telling you about this PTSD support group that he's in charge of, right? Why don’t you go? I think that would help you a lot.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, breathing in hope through his nose, breathing out all his hurt through his mouth. Just like his S.H.I.E.L.D.-appointed therapist says to do. “Yeah, okay.”

Grant smiles at Steve. It's still full of sadness, full of sympathy, but less so. “Okay. Great.”

“You coming with?" Steve asks, still sniffling and red-eyed. "You’ll get to see your _boyfriend._ ”

“Ha,” Grant says, with a little blush, “I don’t think we’re there yet. But—next week, I’ll actually talk to him. Maybe.”  

\---

Steve eventually does go to that PTSD support group, and it does help, a little bit. Eventually, Steve builds that into his routine, too, along with the running, the working out, the attending solo therapy sessions, the volunteering. He doesn't stop going to the Smithsonian to pay his respects, but it helps with the surivor's guilt, at least. 

It's after coffee with someone from the support group—a woman, Maria, long-since-retired, but still attending, still struggling—that Steve comes home to a darkened apartment. Something in his bones feels off about it, so he proceeds, carefully. 

“Hey, asshole!” Steve calls out, softer than he usually would. There’s music playing, but the lights aren’t on. It’s unlike his brother. As is not calling back in response. And that's _really_ what alerts Steve to the fact that something is up. Steve looks to the hallway, and the shield is still there—so, Grant couldn’t be on a mission, either. Hefting the shield up and pulling into a defensive crouch, Steve moves from the hallway, his supersoldier vision key to moving through the darkness. “Bud? You home?”  

To Steve’s shock, there _is_ someone in his home. But it’s not his brother.

Sitting in his recliner is Fury. And he looks like _shit._

Just as Steve opens his mouth to say something, Fury raises his finger to his own lips, quickly tapping out a message on his phone for Steve to read: _SHIELD COMPROMISED._

“What—what happened, Nick?” Steve asks, dropping his voice down, low.

“Wife kicked me out,” Fury replies, keeping his tone casual, as he taps out another message: _EARS EVERYWHERE._ Steve feels his heart thrumming in his throat. So there _were_ people listening in on his conversations with Grant, after all. He swallows, hard, as if to tamp down the urge to raise his shield up, to protect himself and Fury.

“Who else knows about your wife?” Steve asks, falling into the lie easily. Just another thing in having a secret twin brother who’s been MIA for the better part of a century: he’s gotten better at lying. When he has someone’s lead to follow, at least.

“Just my friends,” Fury replies, but the text on his phone says, _JUST YOU AND ME._

“Is that what we are, Nick?” Steve asks, leveling a very, very serious look to Fury. “Friends?”

 “That’s up to you—” Fury starts, but he doesn’t finish. Three shots, like explosions in the dark, puncture the wall, hitting Fury square in the chest. All of a sudden, there’s a woman coming in—their next-door neighbor, a blonde nurse named Kate, except, apparently she's none of those things but blonde—yelling commands into her watch: _Foxtrot is down, unresponsive, EMTs._

Vaguely, Steve remembers saying something to her, _tell them I’m in pursuit,_ but it isn’t a conscious action. He’s moving on instinct, pushing his supersoldier body as far as it will go to catch the assassin who shot Fury. He’s fast, but somehow, the assassin is faster, managing to stay three steps ahead of Steve. It’s clear that the assassin about to get away, so Steve throws the shield at full force, hoping to knock the man to his feet so he can apprehend him—

—but the man catches it.

He catches it, and throws it back at Steve, sending Steve himself struggling to understand what happened.

And then, just as quickly as he finished his job, the assassin is gone, disappearing like a shadow into the night, leaving nothing but a memory of cold blue eyes, a flash of silver, and a trail of violence in his wake.  

\---

With the knowledge of _SHIELD COMPROMISED,_ knowing how truly unsafe he is, Steve moves at double-speed. He doesn’t have the time to mourn when they pronounce Fury dead at the hospital. He doesn’t have the time to be shocked when the STRIKE team, led by Brock Rumlow, tries to take him out. He doesn’t have the time to ask questions when Natasha takes him _on the run._

He doesn’t even have the time to check in, to see if Grant is okay.

It’s only as he and Natasha are literally fleeing all the forces of the law that Steve has a chance to _breathe._

He’s driving along green-lined backroads in a stolen pickup, making his way to a site that Natasha is able to track from some of the information she stole from S.H.I.E.L.D.—a site that Steve is _far_ too familiar with. It’s where he and he and his brother were remade, where he and his brother were set on a path to the future: Camp Lehigh, in Wheaton, New Jersey. Basic training ground for supersoldiers. The Rogers boys’ second-ever home away from home. 

The drive is long, as they're careful to throw any potential cars following them off their path: doubling back and making wrong turns and getting off exits to nowhere. It's mostly-quiet as they do, given that neither of them wants to turn on the radio, in part, because of the risk of being tracked, and in part, because neither of them wants to share their deep, dark musical secrets with the other. 

“So,” Natasha asks, about an hour and forty-five minutes into their trip, finally breaking the silence. “Your brother check in yet?”

Steve almost cracks the steering wheel in half. He’s pretty sure Natasha can hear him swallowing, but he manages to keep his voice calm, steady, and casual, as he responds to her comment—her provocation. “What brother?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but Steve knows when Nat rolls her eyes. It comes across in her tone. “Come on, Steve. Don’t play dumb.”

After a while, he sighs. No sense lying to her any more than he had, now that the cat— _cats, plural_ —were out of the bag. “How’d you know?”

“Here’s a protip, Rogers: it’s always the small things that’ll give you away," she responds, with a shrug, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, learning that your co-worker has a secret twin who’s been coming in half the time. "For example. Sometimes on missions, you wouldn’t respond to your name right away. You’d forget things from some conversations we’ve had, but not others. I’d sometimes talk about being an only child, and you’d answer suspiciously, and not entirely consistently. Things like that. But. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think Brock or any of the rest of the STRIKE team noticed.”

Steve snorts. “But _you_ did.”

“It’s in my nature, said the scorpion to the frog,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“Said the spider to the bear,” Steve parries back.

“I don’t see you as a bear," Natasha says, as if it's the most serious thing in the world. "More like a dog. A Golden Retriever, probably. Or is it a Labrador? I dunno. One of those big, friendly-family dogs with the soft mouths and extraordinarily-high bite rates.”

“You know what?" Steve says, with a smile. "I can live with that.”

They sit in silence for a moment, as the sights of the road zoom by. It almost feels like they’re not fugitives from the law, and they’re just a couple friends, going on a road trip. Until, that is, Natasha brings them back to the subject of the hour.

“So, anyway. Like I was saying. Your brother. Has he checked in?” she asks.

“I hope you’re not implying that you think he’s the one who killed Fury.”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Do I?” He shoots back, his tone maybe sharper than it should have been. 

“I’m not,” she says, "Really."

“Okay. Fine,” Steve says. He sighs, knowing how incriminating the truth will look. But he's going to be honest with her, anyway. Might as well be, given they're both fighting the law together. “Truth is, I don’t know where my brother is. Seventy years of running around in the shadows and existing only as a big fuck-you to the international community gave him this bad habit of fucking off on his own little adventures every now and then. He’ll check in eventually, probably in the next few days. But I know he couldn't have killed Fury. And moreover, I know he’s safe.”

This doesn't seem to satisfy Natasha, but she doesn't push back. Instead, she just asks: “How?”

Steve shrugs. “I can feel him. And he can feel me. It’s faint, but it’s gotten stronger since I really grew into the serum.”

“Twintuition,” she says, as if in awe. If she ever could be in awe.

“Sure.”

“Anyway," Natasha says, pulling them back on-track, "You were saying?”

“I mean. That’s it. I can sense he’s safe. And I know him. Seventy years of experience as a vigilante or not, he’s still my twin brother. So, you know. I know he’s safe. And I know he’s not the one who killed Fury, even if that’s not what you’re asking.”

“Okay,” Natasha says, eventually, but Steve _knows_ that’s not the end of it. Natasha isn’t one to just _drop_ things with a shrug and an _okay._ In the brief year or so that they’ve known each other, Steve has learned enough about Natasha to understand that.

They drive in silence for a couple more miles, the sound of the tires on the ill-paved roads like white noise between them, like static on the car radio. Steve tries not to think about Grant, tries to sit comfortably with the knowledge that he can _feel him,_ still—deliberate, disappeared, but safe.

Eventually, Natasha pipes up, starting the conversation again, once more. For someone who enjoys her silences, she sure loves to break them. “I know who killed Fury.”

Steve looks at her, this time. Eyes off the road, if only briefly. “Yeah?”

She nods. “Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“So,” Steve says, “He's a ghost story." 

She sighs, barely audible, but heavy, for her.  

“A couple years ago, I was escorting a nuclear scientist who wanted to claim asylum. We lost control. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, human-shield-style. So the Winter Soldier shot straight through me,” she says. There’s not a hint of vulnerability in Natasha’s voice, but something about the way she carries her words, something about the way that she speaks, something about the way that she's revealed to Steve a part of her history, makes him _know_ that she’s taking a risk. Despite all her walls, she’s trying to open up to him. And it hits Steve, hard. “Going after him is a dead end. I know. I've tried. Like you said, he's a ghost story.”

There's a _but_ inherent in Natasha's tone, a _perhaps_. It's like hope, if hope was even a possibility, with their respective, overlapping worlds turned upside-down. 

“Well then,” Steve says, his voice gentle. He glances over at her, smiling, and she smiles a humorless little smile at him, too. “Let’s go see what the ghost wants.”

\---

They pull into Camp Lehigh, now-abandoned, a mere shell of what it once was. Steve feels the spirits of the men who he met there. He hears the echoes of dozens of boots and the sharp click of Peggy’s heels. He’s haunted by Camp Lehigh, haunted by the ghost of his former self.

Natasha’s intel leads them into the S.H.I.E.L.D. office, the _original_ S.H.I.E.L.D. office, down into the guts of its underground. It’s there that they’re met with a computer—rows and rows of ancient processors, all connected to a Cold War-era monitor and a shiny, modern USB port. Though neither of them could predict what's on that drive, what that they find when Natasha enters _YES_ to the computer’s question of _INITIATE SYSTEM?—_ what they see has been waiting for them—is nothing they could have ever prepared for: Arnim Zola, alive, but only conditionally. Hydra, in power, and grasping at global supremacy. The Lumerian Star, their crowning achievement, their pre-declaration of victory. The Winter Soldier, a twentieth-century ghost story, with one last mission for the twenty-first century.

It’s nothing that Steve could have ever prepared for, nothing that—if Fury’s death was any indication— _anyone_ could have ever prepared for, save for Hydra itself.

But when Zola chooses to self-destruct with the two of them inside of his technological mausoleum, when Steve realizes that the stakes have risen from _finding who killed Fury_ to _stopping the ascendancy of a reign of global fascism,_ Steve knows one thing.

He needs to find someone that he can trust.  

\---

“Hey,” Steve says, as he stands on Sam Wilson’s doorstep, smiling as friendly of a smile as he can manage. Natasha calls it his _puppy-dog smile._ She doesn’t attempt the same. Somehow, Steve knows it’s not for lack of trying. “We need a place to lay low.”

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” she adds.

Sam looks them over carefully, clearly wondering if he can trust them, wondering if even after a handful of group therapy sessions, he can trust _Steve. For a while, Steve is genuinely worried. For a while, he's sure that Sam will turn them away. But_ eventually, Sam sighs, moving away from the door, letting them inside. Trusting them, damn-near-blindly.

“Not everyone,” he says, providing the one thing Steve needs, the one thing he wasn’t able to find in all of his time in D.C.: an ally. A friend.

With S.H.I.E.L.D. compromised, Hydra in power, Fury dead, and Grant still missing, Steve, now a fugitive from the very agency that let him have a purpose in the new century, didn't have much by means of good things.

But hopefully, maybe, Sam’s brave, leap-of-faith kindness is a sign that the sky will stop falling; that Steve’s world will stop falling apart. At least, that's Steve's one hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops. i intended to post this earlier in the day, but things happened. it's cool. anyway, were officially into the second half of the fic!! the one with more art, by far (but more on that in later chapters).
> 
> as per usual, some notes:  
> \- of course, grant's [BERN 2000 shirt is from the bern science conference](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Bern_2000) in iron man 3. don't ask me what he was doing there. i'm not quite sure, either.  
> \- chapter description is from the postal service's ["the district sleeps alone tonight"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUIBnmdJJ50). very big "steve is in washington, d.c. and lonely" moods. and also, the rest of cap2, but that's upcoming.  
> \- [retrievers actually do have quite high bite rates](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/steffen-baldwin/the-lies-damn-lies-and-st_b_8112394.html). i'm not sure about the statistical analysis being completely sound on this analysis in particular, but yeah. natasha knows her stuff, probably (definitely).  
> \- i really hated the "bye bye, bikinis" line in cap2. it's not the worst piece of nat characterization in the mcu (hey, brucenat face-boobs from aou, how are you doing?) but it's definitely icky. so, here's my attempt at fixing it: by making it at least somewhat introspective, at least somewhat of a chance for vulnerability. 
> 
> next up: what the ghost wants.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ghosts and machines.

Grant Rogers has been around for a _real fuckin’ long time,_ okay. He’s been around the block. He’s found things that cannot—and should not—exist. Hell, he’s one of those things.

So, as he begins following leads, pulling at threads that no one, not even he, thought of pulling at, he begins finding things.

Horrible, horrible things.

In the guts of the basement floor of an unassuming office building in suburban Virginia, Grant Rogers is making his way through a labyrinthine series of empty offices and rows and rows of blinking servers, hoping that whatever he ends up finding—whatever is at the end of this lead—isn’t so horrible that it can’t be fixed, or at least _dealt with._

Rows and rows of servers, and only one happens to be flush against the wall, with blinking lights that seem to cycle in a pattern. _Aha._ With a little maneuvering, Grant manages to push it aside, finding a dark, hidden stairwell, leading him further down, deeper into the belly of Hydra’s hidden operations within S.H.I.E.L.D., within the US government, within the _world_ as a whole.

As he begins to descend the stairs, Grant pulls his phone out, dialing the only number he ever calls. As he makes his way into unknown territory, up against possibly-insurmountable danger, Grant tries to call his brother.  

_The number you have called is not available. Please leave a message at the tone or try again shortly._

Beep.

“ _Hey,_ ” Grant hisses, _speaking in the only code that he and Steve would ever need, speaking in their twin patois. “I’m following up a couple threads I managed to pull on, and I really need you to pick up. Call me back as soon as you get this.”_

The stairwell leads to a single hallway, dusty office wallpaper making way for cold concrete and cracked tiles. It’s a long, long hallway, fully empty, save for the occasional cardboard document box—always empty—and, peculiar enough, a gurney. Eventually, after what seems like ages, Grant gets to the end of the hall, and finds himself facing a door, keycode-locked and steel-enforced.

Well, easy enough.

On the other side of the door is a room. It’s not big, about the size of a hotel room. On one wall, rows and rows of file cabinets; on the other, there’s a desk, covered in a thick layer of dust. Above the desk, hanging like some twisted version of a vision board, are tools of torture: a cattle prod, hooks, a frayed bull whip flecked with dried blood.  

What _really_ catches Grant’s eye, though, is shoved in the corner, lurking, almost like a venomous creature ready to pounce. It’s only partially visible, given that half the bulbs in the room seem to have burnt out years ago, but Grant can see the object in question clearly enough: a chair, something between a dentist's chair and an electric chair. There’s a coil of wires running down the back, and thick, metal restraints on the armrests. It, too, is covered in dust, but Grant has a feeling that it wasn’t abandoned because Hydra suddenly realized it was _inhumane._

He snaps a picture, before trying once more to call his brother. A full thirty seconds of ringing tone. Not a good sign.  

_The number you have called is not available. Please leave a message at the tone or try again shortly._

Beep.

“ _You know, Steve, we got you that phone for a reason, and it sure as hell wasn’t just so you could argue with people about how you hate Norman Rockwell’s art. Pick up. Seriously.”_

Grant wastes no time in tackling the file cabinets. The smell of old, mildewing paper hits him head-on as he opens the first drawer. The documents are in a mix of languages, but it seems that the majority of the files are in Russian. As if that would stop him. What _does_ give him pause, though, is what’s in the files—one, experiment logs on the chair in the corner, another, talking about an experiment. An experiment that was run on a human subject.

Or, rather, an experiment that was run on a _superhuman_ subject.

Grant scrambles for his phone, pressing _redial_ so quickly that he almost forgets that he does it. Heart pounding in his ear, he can barely make out the rhythmic _brrng_ of the ringing tone as he flips through file folders, finding ever-increasingly gruesome details couched in cold, scientific language.

Steve doesn’t pick up.

_The number you have called is not available. Please leave a message at the tone or try again shortly._

Another beep. Predictable as a heartbeat.

“ _I’m serious, Steve. I need you to pick up, now,”_ Grant growls into the receiver, grabbing as many file folders as can fit in his hands. One, labelled in Cyrillic, _DELO no. 17,_ feels particularly heavy. “ _Seriously. I—I think I’ve found something. It’s—it looks like—”_

Grant flips open the file folder, and his entire body freezes as he stares back at the photograph in front of him: a familiar face, a ghost from beyond the grave.

“—oh no.”

\---

Zooming down the highway as fast as wheels will carry them, Sam, Steve, and Natasha don’t talk about the fact that they’re three people against an army; three individuals, on the way to stop the imposition of a new, violent world order. They are enemies of the state now, all three of them, having stolen Sam’s old military equipment from Fort Meade, almost in an act of initiation.

It _would_ be a band of four vigilantes, Steve thinks, grimly, if his brother was around. He pulls out his phone, intent on calling Grant, now that he has the briefest of moments to breathe. To Steve’s surprise, he sees a missed call and a voice message from Grant. As much of Grant’s anxiety that Steve can feel, intermixed with his own, he knows that his brother is, at the very least, safe. He can sense that. But _something_ must be up.

Just as he’s about to call Grant back, just as he’s about to touch base with the only person in the world who he can trust completely blindly, Steve is jolted alert by a thump on the roof. Before he even has the chance to react, there’s an explosion of glass in front of him and a familiar metal arm pulling Sam’s steering wheel from its base.

“Shit!” Sam yells from the driver’s seat. Natasha is shooting, Sam is desperately trying to stop the car, and they’re swerving, wildly. Steve, thinking quickly, grabs his shield and breaks open the door, hoping to make an exit before they crash and the car explodes.

“Come on!” Steve yells, and they pile onto the door, Steve grabbing Natasha and Sam tightly, knowing that their lives depend on his grip. They slide through the busy city streets, barely dodging cars, eventually coming to a perilous stop in the middle of a busy intersection. Once they do, the three of them scatter, scrambling apart to avoid the hail of bullets following them.

Hydra must have thought they had them penned in, using civilian casualties as enough to make the three of them sloppy, to make them easy to take out. But the three of them—Sam, Steve, and Natasha—don’t go down so easily. Sam and Natasha, especially, are full of surprises. Sam slips back into combat mode in the blink of an eye, neutralizing a Hydra goon and grabbing his weapon like the specially-trained soldier that he is. Natasha is quick and clever in combat, just as she is in espionage, darting between evacuating civilians and attempting to neutralize the Winter Soldier.

But it’s not enough. The Winter Soldier is unfazed; he’s a walking tank, the one-man version of a kill squad. Steve sees the Soldier backing Natasha into a corner, putting her in his sights, and sprints at the Soldier, shield-first—only to meet an unyielding metal fist.

After a brief struggle, Steve has lost the shield, and the Soldier holds it in a stance that sets off panic in the back of Steve’s brain _._ When he throws it at Steve, it’s with a precision that even Steve himself struggles to achieve. There isn’t a chance to think long on that, though. There isn’t even a chance to grab his shield. Because the second that Steve gets his eyes back on his target, the fight has become close-quarters; a knife-fight with only one knife.

Steve knew that the Winter Soldier was strong. He knew that he was fast, superhumanly so. Losing him after he assassinated Fury made that very, very clear. But fighting him in close quarters, meeting him face-to-face, is something else entirely. For the first time since gaining the serum, Steve feels an awful, roiling buzz in the pit of his stomach _._ For the first time since the serum, Steve is going hand-to-hand with an opponent with whom he is evenly-matched. For the first time since the serum, Steve realizes that someone matches him, move-for-move. Even when he thinks he has the guy on the ropes, the Soldier does not stop, not even for a moment.

With a couple quick defensive moves, and a little bit of dumb luck, Steve gets enough space between himself and the Soldier to take the risk of grabbing his shield. It’s a sacrifice of mere seconds, but in those mere seconds, the Soldier can kill him. With the shield, he’s able to leverage the most marginal of advantages, knocking the Soldier in the face, stunning him. Steve wastes no time, and he grabs that cybernetic arm, knocks the Soldier in the head once more, for good measure, and flips him, loosing that black polycarbonate mask as he does.

And _that—_ the mistake of pulling the Soldier’s muzzle off, the mistake of revealing his face—becomes a greater blow to Steve than any other blow the Soldier lands.

Because standing in front of Steve, seventy years after his long, long fall, is _Bucky._ Not a picture in the Smithsonian. Not a memory. But the real Bucky. _Steve’s Bucky._

It nearly destroys Steve.

“Bucky?” he asks, the word, the name, the prayer that Steve called out on many a night, slipping off his tongue like a whisper, like a ghost.

The Winter Soldier, Hydra’s attack dog, _Bucky,_ frowns at him, those blue, blue eyes leveling a look at Steve that could very well could tear Steve apart. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

And with those five words, with that moment, Steve, all two-hundred and forty pounds of him, feels small again. With those five words, Steve feels his soul—heavy as the shield and fragile as the twenty-first century life he's tried to construct for himself— _drop._

\---

Everything happens very quickly after that. He remembers a Hydra SWAT team forcing him to his knees. He remembers being cuffed with steel manacles thick enough that even _he_ can’t break them. Not that he could, even if they were made of tissue paper. Steve's so worn out, so damn _broken_ by the reveal of _Bucky, Who the hell is Bucky,_ that he couldn’t fight his way out of this one even if he _tried._ In the back of a prisoner’s van— _Black Maria,_ they used to call them—Steve can only barely process that he, Sam, and Natasha are probably being taken to their graves.

“It was him,” Steve blurts out, his emotions fully overflowing. “He looked right at me like he didn't even know me.”

“How's that even possible? It was like, seventy years ago,” Sam asks, still clearly processing through the fact that spies and supersoldiers and neo-Nazi conspiracies are his new reality.  

“Zola. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall,” Steve says, and _oh, God, it’s all so clear now._ He feels his chest start to tighten, tears threatening to spill over. “They—they must’ve found him, and—"

Natasha sighs. Speaking seems painful, given her shoulder wound, but she manages a few words of comfort, anyway. “None of that's your fault, Steve.”

But it _s._ It _is,_ Steve's fault, and he knows it. He swallows, hard, before murmuring, if only to himself: “Even when our Ma died, even when I thought Grant was going to pass, even when I thought I had nothing—I had Bucky.”

They sit there again in silence, presumably, because no one knows what to say to Steve’s impossible grief. They hit a bump in the road, and Natasha makes a tiny keening noise, attempting to clutch her shoulder, all the while while restrained with cuffs built for a supersoldier.

“Hey,” Sam says, trying to get the attention of one of the guards. The both of them are still in full SWAT gear, masks and all. “We need a doctor. If we don’t get attention, she’s gonna bleed out, right here in the truck.”

The guard furthest from Sam seems riled up by this, nearly moving to strike Sam with his baton. But before he does, the guard closest to Sam stops him, taking a cattle prod to the other guard’s stomach in one quick, fluid motion. A couple seconds, and the guard furthest from Sam is out light a light, and the guard closet to Sam is moving to undo his full-face mask.

“Fuck,” a familiar masculine voice groans, his voice muffled by the SWAT mask. Steve’s eyes dart from the guard, to Nat, to Sam—who, to his credit, has been through a _lot_ over the past few hours, and has been taking it fairly well up until this point. Once the helmet is off—once it’s clear to everyone in the transport van save for the unconscious Hydra operative that they’re in the trustworthy hands of the second Rogers brother—Grant huffs, shaking out his hair in a move reminiscent of a wet dog. “That thing was pinching my brain.”

The window to the cabin slides open, and in the driver’s seat is a third person in SWAT gear, another ostensibly-friendly face in such a moment of uncertainty: Agent Maria Hill, Fury’s right-hand woman. 

“Sorry about that public circus, folks, but we had to make it convincing,” Hill says. She takes stock of her passengers, eventually settling her gaze on Sam, and looking, the best that she can, concerned. “You alright?”

Sam shakes his head, opening and closing his mouth about four times before finally settling on the words to describe how he’s holding up after their day.

“Two of them!” Sam yells, clearly at his wit’s end, surprised, somehow, even as they approach a battle for the fate of the world. “There’s _two_ of them!” 

 

\---

Nick Fury is alive. It’s not quite a shock, after seeing Bucky back from the dead. They share intel. They strategize. They lick their wounds, together. It’s all a rush to Steve. He takes everything in, but it’s almost secondary. All he can think is _Bucky._ After staying in that crowded cavern, Steve needs to get out. He needs to clear his head. Somehow, Steve finds a little patch of green, a bridge overlooking a ravine, one not unlike the one that Bucky fell into, all those years ago. It's a welcome respite, and he breathes, slow. Inhale hope, exhale fear.

“Hey, bud,” says a familiar voice. Steve turns around, even though he knows the voice like it's his own. It practically _is_ , after all. Grant smiles a little smile at him, looking tired as Steve _knows_ he feels. Sam is at his side, and they stand close, intimate, even. All Steve can do is offer a bone-tired smile back. Sam nods at Steve, somehow looking even more sympathetic than Steve had ever seen him before. He must be a sorry case, to get a look from Sam Wilson, licensed counselor, that's so, so filled with sorrow.

“How’re you holding up?” Sam asks, squeezing Steve’s arm in a friendly, empathetic little gesture. It’s a hug by other means.

“Not bad, all things considered,” Steve says, grinning a little lopsided grin. It’s a lie. All three of them know it’s a lie. Sam doesn’t have to be a Rogers twin to know that Steve is falling apart. Sam smiles back at him, squeezing his forearm again, telegraphing that same nonverbal cue— _I’m so, so sorry, Steve. I don’t envy you._

“Sam?” Grant asks. “Could you give Steve and I some space for a second?”

“Yeah, alright,” Sam says, with a nod at Grant. “I’ll see you in a little, Grant.”

Grant grins, and if they were in any other situation, Steve would laugh. Grant is practically making heart-eyes at Sam as he leaves. “Can’t wait.”

Steve and Grant stand in silence for a while. Perhaps it’s a waste of time, given how little time they have to waste, but the two of them simply stand there, letting the rush of the spring winds against the leaves fill the silence between them. They both know how the other feels. Twintuition, after all. Not that it will make either of them feel any better. Not that it will make the inevitable conversation that they have to have about Bucky any easier.

“You two are getting along well,” Steve says eventually, deadpan. Grant shakes his head and huffs out a little laugh.

“Yeah, well, just like me to wait ‘till all of D.C. burns to finally just _talk_ to a guy, huh?” he replies, his voice soft, _lovestruck,_ even at the end of the world as they know it.

“You always _were_ an idiot,” Steve says, deadpan. Grant manages a little smile, and slugs Steve on the arm.

“Ass.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Takes one to know one.”

A silence falls between them. It’s a warm, comfortable respite from the never-ending hells they’ve both lived through in the past seventy-two hours alone. But in the middle of a battle for the future of the world, it can’t last. It never does. Grant is the one whose smile fades first, though Steve—being his twin brother—could feel it coming from a mile away.

“Hey, Steve—I just. I wanted to say that—I’m sorry,” Grant starts, his voice low and strained. “I—I should’ve kept looking for Bucky, too.”

Steve shakes his head. “There’s no way you could have known.”

“Except I _did,_ " Grant admits, his voice full of frustration and guilt and anger, all at once. "Peggy would tell me about him. Not—not Bucky. She didn’t know either, I think, but she definitely’d heard of the Winter Soldier. Faced off against him a couple times, too. Has the scars for it and everything.”

“What about you?”

Grant sighs, sounding deflated. “Me? Nah. Well, no. I dunno. I’ve had a couple close calls that I’d just chalked down to governments and multinationals and whoever else it was that wanted me dead. A couple times I thought I’d sensed someone following me. Thinking back, at least some of those must’ve been him.”

Another silence. Another brief moment of contemplation shared between the twins. This one is heavier, far heavier, but no less genuine than the first. Once again, Grant is the first one to speak.

“I—” he starts. Steve can feel his pain, almost as deep, almost as sharp, as his own. “I really fucked up these last seventy years, huh?”

“Hey, come on. You didn’t. You were busy trying to get me back. There’s no way you couldn’t have known. Besides, it doesn’t matter if you did or if you didn’t,” Steve says, low, level, just barely holding it all together, for his brother. “What matters now is that I’m—we’re—gonna bring him back home.”

He can feel his brother’s guilt deep in his own chest, eating a hole in his heart the way that it must be eating away at Grant’s. Steve hopes that, despite that sympathetic guilt they’re both racked with, that Grant can feel Steve’s own feelings, too. He hopes Grant feels hope. Not the warm, fuzzy, saccharine hope of someone trying, but failing, at empathy. But the burning, angry hope of determination. The hope that will motivate Steve to get Bucky back, no matter what it takes. The kind that Steve was willing to crash a plane for. _Real hope. A soldier’s hope._

They don’t say anything for a while, but Steve knows—Steve can _feel_ —that they both understand. Grant lets out a deep breath, almost like a shudder, and stands up straight, righting himself into that familiar _Captain America_ posture. He looks at Steve, and Steve, before Grant speaks, knows what they both need to do.

“Suit up,” they say in unison, their voices each an echo.

\---

The suit that Steve slips into is comfortable, an echo of what the Army gave him during the war. The colors are less gaudy than the one S.H.I.E.L.D. designed for him after he defrosted, but it’s just as skin-hugging and sleek, thin enough to slip under his own familiar, brown leather jacket. Not the same brown leather jacket that he wore during the war. But it’s close. Close enough, he hopes, for Bucky to recognize it—to recognize him—as _home._  

\---

It should have been a sign—a warning—that Steve is able to get to the guts of the Helicarrier as easily. That easiness should have alerted Steve, should have told him that something was coming, that _Bucky_ was coming. And maybe deep down, he knew it. Maybe deep down, he always knew that the one thing standing between him and taking down the Lumerian Star would have been _Bucky._

But _God,_ knowing wouldn’t have made it hurt any less.

“People are gonna die, Buck,” Steve says, as if all that it would take to get his best friend to stand down would have been a little _convincing._ Bucky levels a look at him, cold. In his hand, Steve’s shield feels heavier than it ever has. He knows that his brother should have taken it. He knows that Grant should have kept it as he went with Sam. But Grant insisted. Steve wishes he hadn’t agreed.

Swallowing his heart—practically swallowing his whole soul—Steve tries once more, hopes that maybe, just maybe, all it takes is one more push. One more plea. One more try. With his voice trembling, and his throat dry, Steve asks Bucky, like a sinner begging for forgiveness:

“Please don’t make me do this.”

And Bucky just _charges._

\---

Bucky is ruthless as they fight, all the sad, tortured anger that Steve saw during the war amplified by the cold, extraordinary violence that Steve saw him commit during the battle on the causeway. Undergirding it all is something new: something _feral._ Something confused. Something scared. Bucky fights with all the force, all the desperation, of an animal cornered.

And it kills Steve. It almost _literally_ kills him.

Disabling the Helicarrier isn’t the hard part. It’s disabling the Helicarrier while Bucky is attacking him. It’s standing up after his best friend has shot him through the stomach. It’s trying to come to terms with the fact that Bucky is on, what Steve quickly realizes, a suicide mission. And Steve is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that Bucky does not complete his mission.

The Helicarrier they’re on shudders, hit with the full force of the Lumerian Star’s missiles all at once. But that isn’t the end of Steve’s mission. Not by a long shot. Holding pressure to his wounds, he scans the collapsing debris for Bucky, finding him trapped under a beam. Trapped, like a creature casualty of the hunt. With what little strength he has left, Steve frees Bucky from under the beam, letting him scramble free, all the while knowing that Bucky will _immediately_ try to kill him. And he does. Bucky tackles Steve at full force, pinning Steve to the ground with his full weight. Steve does not struggle against him.

“You know me,” Steve murmurs, his voice barely-audible against the roar of the flames.

“No, I don’t!” Bucky screams, laying a punch across Steve’s face. Steve, unperturbed, even in spite of the all-encompassing pain, continues on.

“Bucky, you've known me your whole life,” Steve manages. Bucky doesn’t let up. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Shut up!” Bucky yells, a far cry from the expressionless violence of the causeway.

Another punch. Another shooting explosion of pain. Another reason for Steve to keep going. “You’re my friend.”

“You’re my _mission,_ ” Bucky growls, his metal fist flecked with Steve's blood.

As the Lumerian Star crumbles and burns around them, Steve lies under Bucky, prone, every single ounce of his supersoldier strength gone. The pummeling that Bucky laid out to him is taking its toll. Vaguely, he’s aware that he’s bleeding out and his consciousness is slipping. But Steve Rogers, filled with more fight than he was ever meant to have, filled with fight since the very day he and his brother were born, manages one last plea, one last desperate grasp at bringing Bucky back.  

“Then finish it,” he breathes. “ _’cause I’m with you ‘till the end of the line._ ”

And that earns a pause from Bucky—a different kind of confusion, even a sadness, maybe. It’s hard to tell. Between the blood loss and the head trauma, Steve’s thoughts are going fuzzy, and all he can focus on is _looking_ at Bucky, at taking in his everything, one last time. Bucky’s face feels like being home, and his eyes are so, so blue. Steve had been searching for that shade, that steel-blue, for what felt like a lifetime. It’s not a bad thing to see before he goes, all things considered.

And with that, with Bucky’s face etched into his mind, having met Bucky one last, lonely time, Steve—for the second time in his short, ancient lifetime— _falls._  

\---

This time, when Steve wakes up in a hospital bed, he isn’t alone.

Grant is sitting in the chair next to his hospital bed, reading a book that he clearly bought from the hospital gift shop. Sam is dozing off beside him, his head resting on Grant’s shoulder. Later, Steve will ask about that. But for now, he’s just happy to be alive.

“ _Hey,”_ his brother says, softly, once he notices Steve is awake, once he _feels_ Steve is awake. He moves, slowly, so as not to wake Sam. Maybe it’s the horse tranquilizers he’s having pumped into his system, or maybe it’s just the primordial joy that comes from survival, but hearing his brother speaking their secret language makes Steve near-weepy with joy.

“ _Hey,_ ” Steve says, in response. The music humming through the air—a crooning lyricist, spurts of horns and drums, a strong bass, and a simple piano riff—makes Steve feel less like he’s in a hospital bed, if only slightly. “ _Who’s this on the radio?”_

“ _Uh—Marvin Gaye. Sam put it on,”_ Grant says, and his voice is so tender, when he says that. “ _How do you feel?_ ”

He feels like Humpty Dumpty. He _did_ take a long, painful fall, but it’s more than that. It’s more like something is irrevocably different within him, like when he came out of the water, he came out changed. “ _Like shit.”_

 _“Well, yeah. But you’ll live,”_ Grant replies, cocky. Steve manages to stick his middle finger up at him, even if the IV makes it a little bit uncomfortable. Grant laughs, and Steve can’t help but laugh, too, as much as it hurts when he does.

 _“So,”_ Steve says, when they stop laughing. Grant moves to pour Steve a cup of water, and he takes it, graciously. “ _What happened?_ ”

“ _We took down Hydra. Pierce offed himself,”_ Grant starts. “ _You took down the Lumerian Star. We thought you’d gone down with it, but we found you, on the banks of the Potomac. I thought you’d gone. I almost thought we’d lost you. But you were breathing. You were alive. You—someone took care of you.”_

“ _Bucky,”_ Steve breathes. If he had more energy in him, he’d sit up, desperately. But the drugs were strong. Instead, he simply manages, in a breathy little tone: “ _Where is he?_ ” 

“ _He's missing,”_ Grant says, and that won't do. Not for Steve.

“ _We have to find him.”_

 _“We will,”_ Grant says, sitting down by Steve's side, once more. “ _Just—let’s just rest for a while, okay? Please?”_

And maybe it’s the way that the afternoon sun is filtering in through the blinds. Maybe it’s the soft beats and gentle croon of the song that’s filled the room. Or maybe it’s just the tremendous exhaustion catching up to Steve. But in a very un-Rogers-like fashion, Steve hums, closing his eyes and sinking deep into the starchy hospital pillows.

“ _Okay. For a while. But we’re finding him. I promised him,”_ he murmurs, before shifting, briefly, back into standard English. “End of the line _.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at that gorgeous art. that, again, is all the incredible work of [katsukrumbs](https://katsukrumbs.tumblr.com/). look at those expressions. i literally smiled like a big goober when i saw the art in my inbox. i'm still smiling now. what a treat. and there's more still to come (wink).
> 
> anyway, i don't have many notes this time, other than: 
> 
> \- as i said in my [fic notes to ch. 2 of the lions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9230270/chapters/20933219#chapter_2_endnotes), steve and norman rockwell 100% had beef. there is no way they didn't. that is what i believe, in my heart of hearts.  
> \- thinking about just how potent supersoldier-level sedatives must be is a really fun thought experiment. 
> 
> next up: recovery, return.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> standing all alone, tell me you're coming home

The _second_ that Steve is given a clear bill of health, he tries to set off to find Bucky. Unfortunately, Bucky is—always has been—dangerously clever. Knowing the serum, knowing what it did for himself, Steve can only conclude that means that Bucky will only be ever-more clever, and ever-more hard-to-find. He won’t be found unless he wants to be found. Even knowing this, even facing the full brunt of the facts in front of him, Steve intends to go off and do whatever it takes to find Bucky.

Luckily for Steve, Grant knows the serum, too. He knows what it did to him, he knows what it probably did for Bucky, and he knows what it did for _Steve_. And, before Steve can fuck off into the world with nothing but his duffel bag and a longing for Bucky, they sit down and make a plan.

\---

Their plan goes like this.

Grant, having experience on being on the run and unfound, sets off to find Bucky.

Steve, now firmly-situated in the role of _Captain America,_ stays to wield the shield. They find a compromise that sees Steve joining the search whenever he has a weekend off, and Grant setting off with an extra Captain America getup. Just in case he needs it. Just in case it will prove handy.

Their arrangement doesn’t leave Steve feeling satisfied, but they both know that it’s the right thing to do. They both know that, if they’re going to find Bucky, if they’re going to let him know it’s safe to come home, it’s not a job that Steve can take on, given how much higher his stakes are, how much more desperate he is to see Bucky home. And really—it’s not a job that either one of them can do alone.

Which is why, when Natasha and Sam agree to aid in however they can, Steve realizes that though he might be the only one whose sole focus is on getting back _Bucky,_ there are enough people surrounding him who want to help him in that goal to sacrifice their own livelihoods to help.

Steve Rogers, for the first time in his young-old life, actually has honest-to-God _friends._  

\----

It’s when Grant is tracking Bucky through Siberia that the Sokovia Incident happens.

And unsurprisingly, it’s all because of Stark. Two generations of Stark men and decades’ worth of Grant’s stories makes a pattern very clear: as clever as the Stark family might have been, might _be_ , they always, always, have been far too clever for their own good.

Instead of aliens, it’s robots, this time, a swarm of self-reproducing AIs intent on taking the world. And instead of two demigod siblings bringing their family conflict to Earth, it’s a pair of superpowered Sokovian orphans—a speedster brother and his telepathic sister. The kids—young adults, technically, but everyone is a _kid_ to Steve, now—are misguided, but they want to do good. They want to protect and avenge their home country from the wars that Stark was, is, responsible for fueling. There's trauma built into their very bond. But they find their path. They realize that there are better ways to do good. They—Pietro and Wanda—are practically a twenty-first century mirror image of Steve and Grant, just with a few details fudged. They too, make poorly-thought out decisions in an attempt to right the world's wrongs. They too, share a bond that only they understand. They too, fill in the blanks that the other is lacking; they too, are each other’s other halves.

Until they aren’t.

Pietro, Grant to Wanda’s Steve, is gunned down, hit by AI-enabled bullets that are so fast that even a speedster can't outrun them. Wanda feels his death, the loss of her other half, all the way across the city. Standing next to her, seeing her reaction, Steve is almost sure that he can feel it, too.

She’s the one who kills Ultron, the one who brings the world back to normal. But she’s also the one who loses the most. When all is said and done, when the world is settled, once again, she’s the one who still has to suffer the rest of her life without her twin brother.

Steve does what he can for her, once they patch her up, once the med crew is able to make sure she hasn’t suffered any major damage. She has, of course, but it’s not the kind that any trauma team could ever diagnose. When she’s finally cleared as physically fine, Steve goes to her. He tells her about Grant. He tells her that he’s sorry about Pietro. Then, because he can imagine how deeply she's hurting, he lets her cry into his shoulder until she wears herself out.

By the time that all is said and done, Steve, too, is worn out, though not as much as Wanda is. He changes out of his tac gear and the very second he’s clean and comfortable, Steve calls Grant, hoping that their shared bond will let his brother know that he _needs_ to talk to him, even as they’re countries apart.

“Hey, Steve,” answers Grant, after the second ring. His voice is thin and tinny across the line and across the world, but to Steve, it’s as grounding as Bucky’s hand on his shoulder, almost a century ago—or Bucky’s voice in his ear, a year ago.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Where, uh—where are you right now?”

“Still in Siberia. Sam and I lost him for a while, but I think we’ve picked up a lead. I don’t know where he’s going, or what he’s doing, but I think he knows someone’s following him.”

Steve hums. He doesn’t want to hear about Bucky. Not right now. As much as Steve would give to find Bucky, he can only handle worrying about _one_ important person right now. “You’re safe, though?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re safe. Why?” Grant asks. He’s silent, for a moment, before he speaks again, seemingly picking up on Steve’s agitation, on the need for Steve’s sudden call. “Steve? What’s wrong?”

“I—” Steve starts. He feels his eyes welling up, and he breathes in and out, gentle and slow. Just like he did seventy years ago. Just like he's done _so many times,_ over his long, long lifetime. “I watched this kid try to be a hero today. He, uh. He didn’t make it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Grant says, on the other end of the line.

“Uh-huh,” Steve hums. It takes him all his strength, enhanced as it is, to speak what he says next. “He had a twin, too. A twin sister.”

“Oh,” Grant says across the line, his voice sounding deathly serious, even across the grainy connection. “ _Oh_. Christ.”

Steve nods, though he knows his brother can't see it. “She’s—she’s hurting. She’s really, really hurting.”

“I’m—I’m so sorry to hear that,” Grant murmurs. Steve can hear the muffled sound of Sam’s voice, though he can’t make out what he says, not with their connection so poor. Grant says something in response, before Steve can understand him again. “Hey, do you—do you want us to come to you? Are you still in Sokovia? We can be there in about ten hours, or, if I really try, seven or eight—”

“No, no, it’s okay. Really. Just—I wanted to call and say that I—I’m thinking of you," Steve says, though it's not nearly enough. It will never be enough. Hopefully Grant can feel how he feels, though, and know how much Steve means it. "And I need you to be safe, okay?”

“I’ll be safe, Steve," Grant says, quietly. Barely audible, against the static. "And I’ll find Bucky. I promise.”

\---

After the Sokovia Incident, Steve makes an effort to help Wanda settle into her new life in New York City. It means the world to her, but it also means that Steve has less time to take a weekend to fly across the world. It means that he has less time to help Grant find Bucky.

Which is probably for the best, given that Grant could spare no distractions, not now that he has finally caught up to Bucky. Or maybe, Bucky has finally gotten ready to be found.

After months of searching, after months of dead ends, after months of worrying that he’s letting down his twin brother, Grant finds Bucky. He’s returned to Romania, Ma Barnes' ancestral homeland, which Grant takes as a great sign for recovery.

It’s easier to get around in Bucharest as _Captain America,_ but it gives Grant a hypervisibility that he’s not comfortable with. It makes him think back to the war, and it makes him wonder why he’d _ever_ agreed to take on that role—as a symbol, as an icon, as a dancing monkey—in the first place.

At the very least, it makes people trust him well enough to get into Bucky’s apartment. Grant’s _sure_ that Bucky has set up failsafes for breaking and entering, but not for visitors from the community. It’s only what Grant would do, after all. Luckily, the nice young woman from across the hall lets Grant in with Bucky’s spare key—he’d given it to her, apparently, in case she ever needed to get away from her overbearing family. That, too, is probably good sign. Once inside, Grant finds that Bucky’s apartment is ramshackle, outfitted with everything he needs to survive—and, save for a frayed, overstuffed journal—not a single extra thing.

Peeking inside the journal, Grant sees further proof of Bucky’s recovery: memories, dates, dreams. Entries dedicated to the smell of his mother’s perfume, or the kind of cigarettes he used to smoke, or missions he'd completed while operating under Hydra control. There are even little notes about the summer he spent working at the stadium, down to the price of frankfurters.

More damning than anything, though, are the pages and pages about Steve, all evidence that Bucky _knows_ Steve. Even after Steve fully grew into the serum, even after decades of what Grant _knows_ were the most extreme forms memory-scraping and mental conditioning, Bucky still somehow knows that, even though he's bigger, Steve is Steve.

And that, more than anything, Grant takes as a good sign.

Upon flipping to a page where Bucky had glued in a brochure from the Smithsonian's Captain America exhibit, Grant closes the journal, only to find Bucky standing in the doorway, watching him, carefully. There’s a bag of fresh plums in his hand, and his expression is blank, but Grant knows that every single move that he makes is crucial.  

“Hey, Bucky,” Grant says, smiling at him. It’s the first time he’s actually seen Bucky up-close. The whole time that Grant has been following him, Bucky has remained a shadow, a ghost. The stakes are life and death, practically. He keeps his hands visible, and his expression open and honest, waiting for Bucky to make the first move. Having been on the other end of being found, Grant knows how important it is to make sure that he can telegraph that he’s a friendly face. That he’s _safe._ “It’s good to see you.”  

Bucky looks over him for a long, long time, staring Grant straight in the face, unblinking, unyielding. Grant tries not to think about a wild animal, about a big cat calculating when to _pounce_. When Barnes finally speaks, he growls, his voice sounding like he hardly uses it; like he's in the process of coming into it again:

“ _You’re not him._ ”

\---

_Come home as soon as you can. It’s important._

When he sees that message from his brother, Steve drops everything and sprints back to their apartment. He doesn’t need any more of an explanation. He knows what it means. Deep in his heart, deep in his soul of souls, he knows that it means _This has to do with Bucky._

But somehow, despite knowing what Grant’s message means deep in his bones, Steve isn't ready. Steve’s wholly unprepared for the feeling that envelops him when he sees, sitting on their couch, surrounded by empty cartons of Chinese food, and quickly working on more—him. _Bucky._

Steve can’t handle it. He runs to the kitchen the _second_ he locks eyes with Bucky. Like a goddamn coward.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Grant says, as he rushes in after him. Steve can feel himself hyperventilating. He can feel his brother grabbing him, by the shoulders, as if that would help him breathe. “What’s the matter?”

“Fuck,” Steve gasps, “Fuck, Grant. That’s really him. That’s really him, isn’t it?”

“Do you think I would’ve brought him to our apartment to sit on our couch and eat all our food if it _wasn’t_ really him?” Grant asks, and he’s joking, he’s smiling, but there’s a heaviness there. “It’s him, Steve. He’s a little guarded, but it’s him.”

“I can’t believe it,” Steve murmurs. “I—you’re sure?”

“He was able to tell it was me under the helmet, Steve,” Grant says, very, very seriously. “He knew that I wasn’t you.”

“ _Fuck,”_ Steve breathes. He can feel his whole heart pounding a hummingbird-beat, shaking his entire frame.

“I—hey. Listen to me,” Grant says, leveling with Steve. “He told me, in Bucharest—he told me that he wanted to see you.”

And that— _that_ makes Steve stop breathing. He’s quiet for a long, long time. Probably too long, given that Bucky is in his living room, waiting. For him. Bucky is waiting for him. It’s too much. Steve can’t feel himself _breathe._

“Hey,” Grant says, quietly, bringing Steve back to earth, if only slightly. “Are you gonna be able to do this, Steve?”

“I—” Steve starts. _Would he?_ His entire body is on edge, taut as piano wire and ready to snap. There's a very, very high chance that he won’t be able to hold it together, once he _really_ faces Bucky. There's a very, very high chance that he'll be reduced to a blubbering, incoherent mess, which was probably the last thing Bucky needs, coming in from the cold.

But—all the same—it's _Bucky._ He's _right there._  

Steve swallows, hard, before nodding at his brother. Even though he isn’t ready, it was time. Steve knows that. And, deep down, Steve knows that Grant knows that, too.  

“Yeah,” Steve says, taking a deep breath. In and out. Inhale hope, exhale pain. Just like they say at group. “I can do this. I’m ready.”

All Grant does is level a very, very serious look at his brother, and nod. There's no stopping Steve now, anyway.

Crossing the distance from the kitchen to the living room has never felt so treacherous. That walk—a trip that Steve makes every day—seems so, so long, in that moment. But he manages it. Before he realizes it, Steve is standing in front of Bucky, close enough that he can touch Bucky; close enough that he can _smell_ the faded scent of soap on Bucky’s skin. Something hitches in Steve’s chest, and all of a sudden, he feels the full weight of seventy years crashing down on him. In that moment, Steve somehow feels so very, very old, but also feels thirteen again, all at the same time.  

“Hi,” Steve says, sitting down next to Bucky, carefully, ever-carefully, like one would approach something wild. Something that, just like Bucky, could fight or flee in the blink of an eye.

“I—” Bucky starts. His voice is rough, like he hasn’t used it nearly enough, even after a year of freedom. It sends shivers up Steve’s spine, in only the best kind of ways. “Hi, Stevie.”

Stevie. He called him _Stevie._ Not _Steve._ Not _Rogers._ And sure as hell not _Captain._ But _Stevie,_ that old sweetness that Steve clung to so damn _tightly_ as a child. He can barely keep it together. Something opens up in his heart, raw and messy, and seventy years’ worth of fondness threatens to overflow and overwhelm him. Somehow, Steve manages to swallow all that down. Somehow, in the face of all that, Steve manages to speak, even if it’s only one word:

 _“Buck._ ”  

And that’s the only word that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway:  
> \- any time i ever think about the word "homecoming," because i am forever a disaffected kid who grew up in a very specific lower-middle-class upbringing in a very specific era of sociopolitical uncertainty, [green day's nine-minute song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevdP2uJOZ0) will be what i think of. so, chapter description is coming from it, too. sorry, not sorry.  
> \- the scene where bucky is able to tell grant from steve, even with the helmet on, is actually the first scene i ever thought of for this au. i'm very happy for it to be illustrated so-beautifully. again: a million words of thanks to the wonderful katsukrumbs. you can give the piece more love on their tumblr blog.
> 
> next: recovery, for three.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for you, darling, again.

Bringing Bucky back in from the cold has consequences, things that none of them could have anticipated.

There was no way in hell that Steve and Grant were going to keep Bucky under lock and key for the rest of his life. After seventy years of captivity, seventy years of dehumanization, Bucky deserves the freedom to come and go as he pleases. Even—Steve had to continue telling himself—if it means Bucky could one day leave the Rogers residence and never come back.

The first time Bucky leaves, Steve is in a constant, lowgrade state of panic until he returns. It doesn’t get much easier after that first time, but it gets more manageable. Grant, Natasha, and Sam—on the rare weekend that he comes up to the New York for the weekend to be with Grant—are incredibly supportive, and know how to keep Steve from spiraling.

“You can’t let the worry kill you,” Grant says one day, as he brews a cup of tea for Steve. It’s chamomile with lemon and honey, one of Sam’s favorites, something that Grant picked up after spending so much time with the guy. It’s something that Sam, too, has outright suggested, once he realizes that the Rogers boys guzzled black coffee like it's Prohibition all over again. Grant hands Steve the mug, and slides onto the couch next to him. Right in the spot where, if he were there, Bucky would be.

It’s been four days since Bucky was last in the Rogers home. Steve isn’t sure if Bucky is ready to call it _his_ home, too, but he hopes. This time, at least, Bucky left a note beforehand, a goodbye-for-now, carefully-written in Bucky’s familiar, tidy cursive: _I’ll be gone for a few days. There’s something I need to do. I’ll be back soon. – Bucky._

For the four days that Bucky has been gone, Steve has kept that note in his pocket, folded up tightly, as if to seal in the promise that Bucky would return. And though he’s wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch and watch the door, Grant has made sure that he’s not been able to do that. Steve’s twin brother has shown him so much care, forcing him to leave the apartment and do things that take his mind off Bucky being missing—off the constant anxiety about the horror of losing Bucky again. And Steve is grateful for it.

But of course, it doesn’t erase the worry. Not entirely. He sighs, worrying his hand over the smooth side of the mug. Grant leans in a little closer, as if to tell Steve something very, very serious.

“ _I’m gonna say this again: I know it’s hard, but you’ve gotta put enough trust in Bucky to calm down a little, Steve,”_ Grant says, slipping into their own language. “ _If not for yourself, if not for me, for Bucky. He won’t forgive himself if it does._ ”

Steve sighs. Grant is right. Save for distrusting Bucky, all those years ago, Grant has _always_ been right. _Is_ always right. Steve nods, taking a sip of his tea. Grant nods, too, squeezing Steve’s shoulder, gently. He gets it. Clearly, he gets it.

They might have had their own language, but some things don’t take words to understand.  

\---

When Bucky _really_ begins his road to integrating into society again, when the social world just gets to be too much, or when repressed memories make their way back up from the edges of Bucky’s mind, Steve notices: Bucky tends to get flighty.

Sometimes, Bucky will be doing well. Sometimes, he’ll be on the upswing. And then, the return of Hydra-era memories will bring that all crashing down, and he’ll run off, only to return when he’s burned off all the anxious, horrible energy that had been eating him up inside.

It’s a day like that—a day that feels like the prelude to a disappear week—that Steve catches Bucky in the living room, looking like he’s really, really struggling. Steve knows that he can’t just ask _what’s wrong._ He knows that _what’s wrong_ isn’t productive. It isn’t healing, not in and of itself. So instead, he asks the next best thing—hoping that maybe, it won’t end _too_ badly.

“Hey—” Steve starts. It’s a long shot, and he realizes it, but he wants to help Bucky. And deep down, he doesn’t want to see Bucky disappear for another week. Maybe those two things aren’t mutually-exclusive. “Spar with me?”

From his expression, Bucky looks like he can barely believe what he's hearing. He's silent, for a while, as if calculating, as if thinking through all of the possibilities, all of the benefits, all of the horrible, horrible downsides, before speaking.

“I—” Bucky says, looking conflicted. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me,” Steve says, gently, making his way over to Bucky, closing the distance between them in a few short steps.

“No, I—” Bucky stammers. He doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t make a move to leave. Steve’s taking that as a good sign. “What if I lose control? What if I—what if I try to kill you?”

“Buck. It’s okay. I trust you,” Steve says, and Bucky looks up at with those big, blue eyes that Steve fell in love with, all those decades ago, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. As if Steve’s words mean more to him than President Chavez’s pardon ever could. Bucky chews his lip, thinking hard on the proposition, but he doesn't refuse. Instead, he just nods, looking conflicted, but looking determined, all at once.

“Okay,” Bucky says, eventually, getting to his feet. “Okay.”

\---

Bucky fully pulls his punches that first time they spar. Steve can tell. But it’s enough. It’s enough to take Bucky out of his head. It’s enough for Steve to let go of his worry. It’s enough to get the both of them, evenly-matched supersoldiers, even despite Bucky’s handling of Steve with kid gloves, sweating. It’s even enough to get a smile out of Bucky, when just an hour before, he was so filled with anguish. And, as Steve will never admit to anybody—it’s _almost_ enough physical, skin-to-skin contact with Bucky for Steve to be satisfied.

It’s nothing, but it’s something—and for the time being, until Bucky is well-enough to make the next move, if he makes _any_ move, it’s the closest to _intimacy,_ real intimacy, that Steve will ever get.  

\---

Months pass like this. The road to Bucky—and Steve's—recovery is slow, incremental, but blooms, thrives, once they're working out together. Once they're working _through_ things together. It's a long road, but to Steve, it hardly feels like that. Having Bucky back in his life makes everything feel so much back on-track. If waking from the ice was like waking from a bad dream, getting Bucky back is like finally, _finally,_ being fully-awake after a long, hazy, post-nightmare morning.  

It helps that Bucky is a regular, formidable sparring partner. _Especially_ as Bucky becomes more confident in himself, in no small part _because_ of the sparring. Sure, Grant is a great workout buddy, and the only real person who could keep up with Steve, before Bucky. But Steve and Grant are also two sides of the same coin, of the same brain, almost. They know each other’s moves too well. They can practically anticipate each other's moves on Twintuition alone. Bucky, though, could keep Steve on his toes.

Having Bucky—more confident, more comfortable, more _alive_ —as a sparring partner _did_ have one downside, though. With a robust support system and a stable routine, Bucky is _healing,_ physically, emotionally, and mentally. He’s going to therapy, eating regularly, keeping on weight, and sparring with Steve.

Meaning: Bucky is filling out all over again. Just like when he started working at the docks, instead now, it's not just going from squishy pre-pubescent puppy to Brooklyn prettyboy-boxer. No, no, now. Now, Bucky quickly fills out in only the way that supersoldiers can: going from a sickly-fit version of himself under Hydra, to bulking up enough that Steve finally understands the internet's obsession with his _Dorito waist_ , because Bucky has the same thing, albeit, a little less extreme. It's just like when Bucky started working at the docks all over again, and just like when he started working at the docks, _it changes everything._

\---

“ _Fuck,_ Grant,” Steve whispers, under his breath, one afternoon. It’s summer in New York, and the three of them, like the good young thirty-somethings they are, have decided to get hot coffees, even in the sticky, ninety-degree heat. Grant is wearing the facial mesh again—it’s the only real way they can go out in public together, after all. He’s not wearing Coulson’s face, though, which Steve is thankful for, now that he’s actually met the guy.  

“What?” Grant asks, as he looks up from his phone. There’s three kissy emojis on his screen. He and Sam would be cute, if they weren’t _disgusting._ Not that Steve is any better. Not that he's any less lost on his own guy.

If Bucky’s version of the serum gave him anything close to the hearing that Steve and Grant have, whispering probably isn’t enough. Steve switches languages, hoping that the serum didn’t rewire Bucky’s brain so that he fully understands the twin patois. “ _Bucky looks so fucking good. Fuck._ ”

Grant grins, clearly struggling to look casual. Steve doesn’t like that. Not one bit.

“ _Oh, yeah, sure. He’s really looking healthy,”_ Grant says, as he pockets his phone. Steve wants to grab it and throw it into the Hudson. He doesn’t, though, if only because that would mean that Grant would _absolutely_ get even, probably in a way involving Bucky. “ _I guess bulking up is what happens once you start eating real food after decades of liquid diets and a whole year surviving off scraps.”_

The sick pleasure that his brother is getting at watching Steve squirm _has_ to be a form of torture. It has to be.

“ _Stop it,”_ Steve hisses, slugging his brother on the shoulder. He glances up to see Bucky, all six-foot-something, two-hundred-sixty-something pounds of him, smiling at them. _“Fuck! Look at what you did. He’s looking over here.”_

 _“You know, I think he’s bigger than either of us now,”_ Grant teases, completely doubling down. _“Reminds me of back before the war, when he was working the docks. But, of course, you and your right hand probably remember those days a lot more fondly than I do, huh?”_

Steve grins, waving at Bucky as he hisses, through gritted teeth: _“Go straight to hell, Grant.”_

Bucky walks on over, strutting that big cat strut of his, the one that places his center of gravity squarely in his cock. As he hands the coffees over, Steve grabs at his drink, desperately trying to keep himself from moaning as Bucky leans forward, elbows pushing his massive pecs together _just_ so. “You two look like you’re up to something.”

“Nope,” Grant says, with a little shrug. “Just enjoying the beautiful day.”

Bucky smiles a wolfish little grin that _really_ shouldn’t be as hot as it is. Steve _doesn’t_ imagine those teeth sunk into the delicate skin at the crook of his neck. He _doesn’t. Really._ “That means trouble.”

“Not as much trouble as we’re gonna get to now that you’re back,” Grant says, with a raise of his eyebrows.

“Well now,” Bucky says, and maybe he’s dipping his voice a little lower. Maybe he’s grinning at Steve, that wolfish smile directed at full force towards him. Or maybe Steve is just projecting. Maybe he’s just hoping. Either way, he keeps drinking his coffee. “Good thing I like trouble like you, huh, Stevie?”

All Steve can do is hum. His coffee is half-gone already. Grant just levels a smile at Bucky, but Twintuition doesn’t lie: Grant is _tickled_ about this.

Steve loves his brother more than he loves anything else in the world. It’s probably a tie between Grant and Bucky, and then New York City right behind them. Grant is the other half of him, literally.

But _God,_ if Grant doesn’t make Steve wish he were an only child, sometimes.

\---

They keep sparring together. As Bucky gets more comfortable with Steve, with himself, he also gets more _physical—_ more willing to throw his whole weight at Steve, more willing to _hold_ Steve.

And it’s great. It’s an incredible workout, it’s incredible news for Bucky’s recovery, and it keeps them both on their toes. It’s great. Really. Steve is happy about it. And if he has to get himself off in the gym showers, once he knows that Bucky has left the stall next to his, well. That’s doesn’t make it any less great. As awkward as it might be, for Steve, anyway.

It’s no different on this day. No different, except for the fact that Bucky is _particularly_ aggressive with his tactics today. He makes a move to sweep Steve’s legs, and Steve dodges, only to have Bucky take advantage of Steve’s usual evasive move and hook his leg around Steve’s, bringing him down like a stack of bricks. Before Steve can even try to get up, Bucky is on top of him, his left arm hooked under Steve’s shoulder, his right arm, pinning Steve’s wrist to the small of his back.

It _does things_ to Steve.

“Is that all you’ve got, Rogers?” Bucky murmurs, his breath hot against Steve’s neck. Bucky’s left arm _whirrs_ in that way that spells energy, excitement, danger. Anyone else, and Steve would have taken that chance to throw him off. But between that low, low rumble of Bucky’s voice and the feeling of his full weight pinning Steve face-down into the mat, his powerful thighs bracketing Steve's body, Steve’s legs go weak, and all the strength he has—the full range of his supersoldier abilities—go into suppressing a soft, desperate little whimper. He’s quickly going hard, and he has to cycle through several Hail Mary’s in his mind before he starts calming down.

“Alright—” Steve starts, his voice still sounding shaky, even to him. “I give.”

As Bucky pulls back, he’s slow, as if trying to anticipate a sneak attack. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes into the mat, “Really.”

“Did—did I hurt you?” Bucky asks, and all of a sudden, he’s up and in front of Steve. “Oh my God, Steve, are you okay—?”

“No, no, no, Buck. I’m—I’m fine,” Steve says, sitting up quickly. He tries very, very hard to angle himself so that Bucky won’t be able to see the bulge in his sweatpants. “No, you didn’t hurt me. I just—It’s been a long week, and I think I’m done for the day, is all.”

For a moment, Bucky stares at him, eyebrows furrowed tightly in concern. Steve smiles at him, hopefully reassuringly, and eventually, Bucky just sighs, nodding. He doesn’t seem reassured, not really, but he does extend his hand to help Steve up. Steve takes it, not wanting to worry Bucky any more than he already has.

“I’m gonna hit the showers, if we’re done for the day,” Bucky says, not dejectedly, but not in the upbeat, satisfied way he would after a regular sparring match, either. It makes Steve feel awful. It makes him feel like he's just kicked a puppy and robbed an orphanage, all at the same time.

“Hey,” Steve says, “On the way back home, I’ll buy you a smoothie, okay?”

Bucky smiles at him, lighting up like a fireworks display. It hits Steve, making his heart feel soft. “Thanks, Stevie. I appreciate it.”

Steve takes his time before entering the shower, standing in front of his locker, staring at himself, trying to remind himself how to _breathe._

He’s done this whole, _being in love with Bucky_ thing before, he tells himself. It’s not new. It shouldn’t be a problem just because they’re both, technically, in their nineties.

But it’s never that simple. Learning that Bucky was _alive_ was proof enough that it was never going to be that simple. And as Steve pads into the shower stall next to Bucky’s, quietly, almost silently, he realizes, once more—it never could be, it never _was_ that simple.

As Steve stands in the stall, bone-dry and nude as the day he was born, he listens to the pitter of water next to him, imagining Bucky, standing there, his long, dark hair plastered against his temples, the nape of his neck, his cheekbones. Steve stands there, imagining Bucky, when he realizes—through the white noise of the shower stream—Bucky is getting himself off.  

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everyone involved in Bucky’s recovery process was informed, at the outset, that his libido would come back, eventually, once the chemical castration agents that Hydra pumped him full of cycled out of his system. Steve and Grant had _conversations_ about it, about how they would deal with it. But vague, half-formed conversations were one thing. Becoming witness to it—especially after being so physically _intimate_ with Bucky—now, that was a whole other thing. Hearing Bucky touching himself in the shower next to his brings Steve back to being all of nineteen years old and ninety pounds soaking wet, and wanting, _wishing,_ to be with Bucky. To _touch_ Bucky. It makes him ache, almost desperate with need.

And much like he did, seventy-something years ago, Steve takes care of himself, silently, desperately, wishing, more than anything, that the hand stroking his cock wasn’t his own, but Bucky’s.  

\---

Bucky continues to cover by leaps and bounds, settling more into his mind and his body. And with that, comes a greater comfort with _touch,_ with non-sexual physical intimacy.

Having once been so firm and skittish in his boundaries to never sit on the same couch as someone, Bucky, one day, begins sitting right next to Steve, resting his head against Steve’s shoulder, murmuring details about his day as Steve tries to sketch their old apartment from memory.

That, too, quickly becomes routine.

Grant notices. Steve _knows_ he notices. But Grant doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just smiles at the two of them, warmly, taking his seat in the armchair next to the couch, and leaving Bucky and Steve to be _Bucky and Steve._

\---

“You need to tell him you have feelings for him, you know.”

Steve looks up from his breakfast—a big, chocolate-filled pastry from some shop in Penn Station—a quizzical look on his face feigning ignorance. It doesn’t work, not between the two of them. They share too much, know each other too well. Know the _topic at hand_ too well. But it was worth a shot.  

“You and Bucky,” Grant continues, hefting his overnight bag higher onto his shoulder. They navigate the crowds with ease, enjoying the relative anonymity that a rumpled hoodie, glasses, and one high-tech facial mesh can afford them. “You two need to sort things out between each other, I mean.”

“Grant—” Steve starts, but his brother doesn’t let him finish.

“I know what you’re going to say, Steve. That you need to give him his space, that you recognize he’s still in recovery. And that’s great! It’s real, honest-to-God great that you’re so considerate of him and caring.”

“But?”

“But the tension between the two of you is impossible, Steve. It’s impossible. Back when we were living with him? Back during the war? I got it. We already had enough going for us, being sick all the time.”

Steve nods. It was a dangerous game, after all, being queer _and_ sick _and_ a little spitfire, back in the thirties. The two of them knew that well enough. “Right.”

“Neither of us would’ve done well in a sanitarium. That was _survival._ And I’m not saying you two have to start going public, or anything!" Grant exclaims, maybe a little too loudly. No one notices. It's Penn Station, after all. "I’m just saying—I’ve lived through this once already. And the tension and the misery that you both put into the apartment, all the pining, it’s fuckin’ exhausting! I don’t know if I can let you dumbasses do this _again._ So you need to tell him that you have feelings for him and put the both of you—and _me_ —out of this misery. Please.”  

“Wait—” Steve says, stopping right in his tracks. He knows Grant is going to yell at him if they miss their train back to Brooklyn, but he has to get something clear. Get something _queer._ “Both of us?”

Grant shoots his brother a _look._ Steve’s seen that look a million times before. But never, ever, does it get any less withering. He feels like the only person in the whole goddamn station, that’s how withering it is.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you are _a fucking idiot,_ Steve.”

\---

Grant doesn’t know where he went wrong with his brother. He really doesn’t. They share all their DNA and somehow, Steve seems to be completely ignorant to things that are _right in front of his face._

And so, Grant tells Steve that. Not in those exact words, of course. But Grant tells Steve, in broad-enough strokes, that Bucky Barnes is in love with him, and has been, since the _goddamn nineteen-twenties._ He tells Steve, Bucky is in love with him. And they need to talk about their feelings. Like the mature ninety-year-olds they are.

But of course, when has Steve ever listened to Grant, anyway.

\---

Steve notices one thing about his brother, a new development, something that comes into being alongside Bucky’s recovery. Since bringing Bucky in from the cold, Grant—though he never likes to admit it— has fully embraced the semi-civilian life. For lack of a better word, Steve’s twin brother, the man who lived on the run for the better part of a century, has _settled down._ He’s _domesticated._ He even has a _standing plans,_ like a real, settled-in person: every other weekend, Grant spends four days in D.C. with Sam, leaving Steve alone in their shared apartment with Bucky.

It’s usually not a problem. Steve gives Bucky his space, Bucky gives Steve his own space, and more often than not, they usually end up pressed up against one another, fully in each other’s space. Days alone, days without Grant to mediate, aren’t usually a problem, not between Bucky and Steve.

But the both of them—both, in various stages of recovery—rely on routine, on timelines, on stability. And on this day, on this fall morning, a surprise storm makes their routines, that precious stability, get completely thrown to the wayside.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, as soon as he’s in the apartment. He’d intended to go on a run that morning. And he _had_ run a little bit that morning, until big, cold raindrops started falling. “It looks like it’s gonna storm, so I decid—”

And there Bucky is, spread out on the couch, his boxer briefs tucked down below his waist and his cock in his hand.

“Fuck!” Steve yelps, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sorry, sorry! I’ll—”

“ _Fuck,_ ” is what Bucky growls, his voice low, breathy, and _oh—_ Steve thinks, as he finds himself, all of a sudden, watching Bucky come, knowing fully well that he shouldn’t be standing there, staring, enraptured by the idea of what it would feel like to have Bucky shoot off all over his face, of what Bucky’s spunk would taste like, hot and heavy on his tongue.

“I—” Steve starts, feeling his entire body beginning to turn a bright, embarrassing shade of pink. “I’m, uh. I’m going to be in my room.”

Steve is barely able to make it to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him as he fumbles at his athletic pants, his own cock already painfully hard. He doesn’t even make it to his bed, instead, just sinking down to crouch on the floor, his back to the door as he works himself off, thinking of nothing but Bucky, Bucky, _Bucky_.  

\---

It’s still raining by the time that Steve makes his way out of his room. Bucky isn’t in the living room anymore. Familiar worry bubbles up in Steve’s chest, but he realizes that he shouldn’t check Bucky’s room to see if he’s there, either. Instead, Steve just pours himself a cup of coffee. It’s fresh, so either Bucky is still in the apartment, or he _just_ left. Steve tries not to think about which option he would prefer more.

A few minutes later, Steve hears Bucky’s bedroom door creak open. Steve tries very, very hard to keep a straight face. Bucky pads into the kitchen, his footfalls quiet, but his movements deliberate. He’s very much making sure that Steve sees him before he does anything, before he says anything. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve says, trying to keep himself calm. Trying to keep his eyes on Bucky’s face, and definitely, definitely not the thick outline in Bucky’s sweatpants. Steve smiles at Bucky, calm, friendly, still thinking about Bucky’s cock.  

“I—I’m sorry about that,” Bucky says, and he seems genuinely devastated. Maybe if it were earlier on in his recovery, he would have run off. Maybe he would have disappeared without a trace and never come back. So, Steve was taking this awkward conversation as progress. “It was inappropriate for me to—you know. On the couch. And—I’m. I’m really sorry, Stevie.”

“Wouldn’t’ve been the first time someone got off on there,” Steve laughs, nervously, wincing as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Maybe Grant and Bucky had the right idea, running off and becoming fugitives, every now and then.  

“Well, I, uh. I’m—I’m really, really sorry. And if—if you don’t want me around anymore, if that’ll make it awkward, I—I get it. I can find a new place, maybe move in with Natasha for a while—”

“What? No!” Steve starts, then, realizing he might have come across a little bit too intense, a little bit controlling, even, he backtracks, quickly. “I mean—no, Buck. I—I don’t want you to move out. You don’t have to do that. Seriously.”

“it’s just—”

“No, no, Bucky, really. It’s fine. It was—I mean. It wasn’t _fine,_ but it’s nothing that I’d kick you out for. I—I mean, shit, Buck. It’s nothing we hadn’t been through before,” Steve says, the words spilling out before he even really can figure out what he’s saying.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, “What?”

“I, uh. When we were living with you, in your bedroom. I’d—uh. Sometimes I’d hear you. You know.”

Realization comes quickly and visibly, horror spreading across Bucky’s perfect features. “ _Oh_. Oh, my God, Steve.”

Great going, Rogers, Steve thinks to himself. You _fucked up._

“No, no, it’s—it’s okay!” Steve says, quickly, desperately trying to fix a situation that somehow went from bad, to worse, to even _worse._ “I—I didn’t mind.”

“I’m the _worst roommate_. I’m so sorry, Steve, I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

“Hey, Buck. Listen to me,” Steve says, taking Bucky in by the wrists, lacing their fingers together. It feels too intimate, almost, especially after how damn _awkward_ everything was, but something felt right about it, about literally holding Bucky’s hand through the trials of relearning humanness in all its uncomfortable complexities. “It’s—it’s past, okay. It’s—it’s okay. Seriously.”

Bucky doesn’t look convinced. Not at all. Steve swallows. He knows he should stop talking. He knows that now’s not the right time to tell Bucky how he feels. But before he can second-guess himself, he’s speaking again, and this time, he’s speaking his truth. “And, uh. Truth be told. I—uh. I didn’t mind too much. If you—I mean. You know.”

“Are—” Bucky starts. “Are you using the fact that I’ve been a fuckin’ gross pervert for seventy years running to admit that you used to get off on me getting off, Steve?”

“I, uh—I mean. Not—exactly,” Steve says. It’s hard to keep eye contact with Bucky, and he finds his gaze darting away, focusing on Bucky’s clavicle, on his shoulder, on the familiar curl of his hair. “Used to.”

Bucky blinks, looking confused. “What are you saying?”

“I—” Steve starts. What _is_ he saying. “It’s—I mean. It’s not just that. You’re—you’re hot! I mean, you’re really, really hot, Buck. But it’s more than that, it’s—I—I like you, Bucky. I like you a lot.”

“But—?”

“No _but_ , Buck, I like you. I—” Steve sighs. He can’t turn back, not now, but it terrifies him, moving forward. “I have feelings for you. I think about you all the time.”

Bucky is quiet for a moment, looking at Steve, carefully, as if to decode some hidden meaning in his words. Steve wants to kiss him. He also wants to die, kind of. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I—I dunno, Buck, I honestly can’t say,” Steve says, looking away. He looks down and notices—their hands are still laced together. Bucky has not pulled away. “I guess it just felt right?”

“You walked in on me jerking off and thought to yourself, _oh, now, now’s the time that I tell Bucky that he’s always been my best guy_?”

“Look, I know it’s stupid, okay—”

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky says with a little laugh, but there’s no malice there, no hurt, nothing that makes Steve feel _worse_ inside. “It is. But I never said I mind it.”

“Stevie, I’ve been trying to get you to notice me the way I notice you for the better part of ninety years,” Bucky says, and _oh,_ does that do something to Steve’s insides. “Not—you know. I didn’t. I—uh. I wasn’t _trying_ to jerk off in front of you. I’m still really, really sorry about that. But—yeah. I’ve been in love with you practically since the moment I saw you.”  

“Then why didn’t you ever say anything, jerk?”

“Why didn’t _you?_ ” Bucky asks.

“Oh my God. Grant is right. I’m a moron.”

“We both are,” Bucky murmurs, pulling in Steve closer, ever-closer, then adding, gently, “ _Punk._ ”    

Neither of them really starts it, or if one of them does, it’s unclear. Instead, it seems, they just gravitate towards each other, leaning into each other’s space, gradually, incrementally, just as they had been doing in a larger scale over the past year or so of Bucky’s recovery. They pull towards each other, and they fall into a kiss, a kiss that holds the air of waiting; a kiss that holds the air of _finally._ Bucky tastes like coffee and cream, with just a hint of toothpaste. Somehow, Steve thought that he would taste like cigarettes, like nostalgia, like how he thought Bucky would taste, in his dreams, but somehow, the reality is so, so much better. He kisses Bucky, deeply, leaning in as Bucky settles his big hands on Steve’s waist. Steve’s own hands, too, have found themselves to Bucky, dipping below the waistband of Bucky’s sweats, trailing down, touching Bucky, groping, if only gently.  

“ _Oh,_ ” Bucky murmurs, pulling away, briefly. “Hey.”  

“Sorry, I—” Steve starts, pulling away, ever-slightly. His whole body is blushing, but somehow, it feels different from earlier. Bucky shakes his head.  

“No, don’t be, I, uh. I was thinking—” he starts, trailing off. Steve nods. He was thinking the same thing.

“Let’s—” Steve starts, swallowing, and wow, Bucky’s eyes are gorgeous, aren’t they? “Let’s, uh—”

“Yes. Bedroom. On it,” Bucky says, quickly, and he scoops Steve up in his strong arms, carrying Steve to his bedroom like he doesn’t weigh a _damn thing._ And it does _so much_ for Steve.

They don’t bother closing the door this time. Instead, Bucky just sets Steve down on his California king, and they immediately start into a sloppy kiss. They’re both hurried, desperate to get out of their clothes, both desperate to get clothes off _each other,_ a whole century’s worth of longing evident in their impatient actions. Steve registers Bucky pulling his shirt off, but only barely, as he’s too busy pulling Bucky’s gray sweatpants off, grabbing a handful of Bucky’s ass as he does.

Eventually, Bucky takes a step back. Steve whines, eyes fixed to Bucky, as Bucky tucks his thumbs under his waistband, and slowly, slowly pulls his boxer briefs off, his huge, fully-hard cock springing free with a hypnotic little bounce.

“Jesus Christ, Buck,” Steve breathes, raking in every inch of Bucky’s bare body. Bucky really _was_ bigger than Steve, everywhere, even _with_ the serum. Steve scrambles out of his own boxer briefs, not nearly as graceful or sensual as Bucky, but far, far more quickly.

“Damn, baby,” Bucky murmurs, making his way back over to the bed. Steve can feel his heartbeat thrumming in his throat, his mouth going dry as he watches Bucky move. “You’re _gorgeous,_ Stevie.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks, as Bucky pulls him into another kiss. It will _never_ stop feeling this good, kissing Bucky, and Steve is sure of it.

“Mm,” Bucky murmurs, against Steve’s mouth. He pulls away, briefly, looking Steve in the eye, his pupils blown wide. “You are. You’re so, so goddamn pretty.”

And Steve wants to say, _no, you,_ but he can’t; the words don’t come to him, not quick enough. He breathes, too enraptured by the whole of _Bucky._  

“How do you wanna do this, baby?” Bucky eventually asks, his voice dipping into a low rasp. It makes Steve shiver in all the right ways.

“Want you inside of me, Buck,” Steve says, quietly, like he’s admitting a secret. He practically _is._ “Been thinking about you inside of me since you started pinning me, holding me down, when we spar.”

“That does it for you, baby?” Bucky asks, his hands gently, gently making their way over to Steve’s wrists, “You like it when I hold you down?”

Steve barely manages to breathe, imagining Bucky pinning him down, holding him still with his complete weight, as he rails him. He lets out a little whimper, but manages, somehow, to moan a little, “Yes, Buck. Yes.”

“I can do that, then,” Bucky murmurs, and he shifts, gently, gently pushing Steve onto his back. Steve shifts, too, moving to pile a couple pillows under him, propping his ass up as Bucky settles between his legs.

“Lube?” Bucky asks, and Steve fumbles around his side table drawer, trying to get bottle without moving too much. He manages, and tosses it at Bucky, who uncaps it, one-handedly, and quickly begins to get to work. Watching Bucky slick up his fingers literally makes Steve tremble with anticipation, his knees quaking as he settles them on Bucky’s shoulders. “Hey. Relax, baby. I’m gonna take care of you.”

All Steve can do is nod, levelling his breathing as Bucky slowly, slowly traces a finger along Steve’s hole, before sticking it in, crooking it about, opening Steve up, readying Steve for his dick. Steve lets out a little gasp, as Bucky starts in with another finger, and then another, working Steve’s hole just as gently, just as slowly, just as _incrementally,_ leaving Steve feeling constantly on the _edge_.

“Buck—” Steve keens, his dick leaking a little pool of precum on his stomach. Bucky stops, pulling his fingers out of Steve quickly, leaving Steve feeling empty and wanting.

“Sorry, sorry, baby, did it hurt?” Bucky asks, and _God,_ Bucky would be so goddamn charming if feeling left strung-out and needy weren’t so goddamn _annoying._

“Buck, you’re incredible, you’re amazing, you’re perfect,” Steve starts, fully unbothered by the fact that he knows sounds a little huffy, and maybe even a little bratty. “But I need your dick _right now._ ”

Bucky is quiet for a moment. It’s a brief moment, a short aside for contemplation, but for Steve, so strung-out, so full of _wanting,_ it feels like an eternity. Eventually, Bucky shifts, squaring his shoulders, and he just growls, “Wrists together. On the headboard. _Now_.”

And Steve, desperate to please, desperate to get _fucked,_ does just as he’s told.

Bucky shifts, moving so that Steve is bent just _so,_ pinning Steve’s wrists to the headboard with his right hand. It’s not ideal, but it’ll manage. And besides, any worries that he might have had about it are completely forgotten as Bucky pushes his big, thick cock into Steve, slowly, slowly, _slowly._

“ _Fuck,_ ” he breathes. It’s so much, almost too much, as Bucky begins to move, thrusting long and slow into Steve.

“Christ, baby,” Bucky gasps, his voice a low rumble in his chest. “You’re so goddamn tight, Stevie.”

All Steve can do is let out a little moan, a little fucked-out noise that makes Bucky quicken his pace. Bucky is gorgeous above him, all broad, hard muscle and _control,_ and it makes Steve’s brain go all fuzzy. He’s always loved that about Bucky, the way he takes charge, the dangerous set of his shoulders when he set to do something, single-mindedly, and determinedly. It always set something off in Steve’s hindbrain, and it does _everything_ for Steve now, and Bucky fucks him, single-mindedly, determinedly, _relentlessly,_ filling Steve up with his big, big cock like it’s his _mission._

“Fuck, Steve, you’re perfect, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, rolling his hips against Steve’s hole. “So good, baby, you’re so fucking _good_ —”  

Bucky’s thrusts become rougher, the grip of his left hand on Steve’s hip bound to leave bruises that even the serum won’t heal—not for a while. Steve can feel himself getting close, torn between wishing he could touch himself—stroke his own cock, play with his own nipples, _anything_ —and getting off on the feeling of being completely, fully unable to break Bucky’s grip, of leaving himself to Bucky, to letting Bucky have control. It’s all so much, _too much,_ when Bucky suddenly hits Steve _just right,_ hitting the place in Steve’s belly that makes him go all taught and loose and wordless, all at once. Steve, as if on instinct, manages a _there, please, please,_ and Bucky, perfect, beautiful, _dangerously-good_ Bucky, follows his cues perfectly.

“You like that, baby? Right there, yeah?” Bucky growls, almost animal-like. Steve’s fully gone, words fully failing him. All he can do is nod, making a breathy little noise of approval, of _want_. “ _Christ_ —you’re so good, Stevie. So goddamn good to me.”

“I’m—I’m close,” Steve half-stammers, and Bucky thrusts into Steve, dropping his grip on Steve’s wrist, ever-briefly, to lace the fingers of his right hand with Steve’s. It shouldn’t have done much for Steve—really, it shouldn’t have done _anything_ for Steve, but it does. It does, it absolutely does, and as Bucky pounds into Steve’s hole, roughly, unrelentingly, Steve feels himself, sudden as the morning’s thunderstorm, _undone._ Steve’s entire body tightens, clenching around Bucky, and he comes, quick and sticky, spilling almost a century’s worth of want on his stomach, there and then. He barely feels in his body, after that, feeling higher than he did after stepping out into the world with the serum. And just as quickly as Steve came, Bucky comes, too, warm and sweet and so, so fucking _good,_ filling Steve up just fucking _perfectly._

“Fuck, baby, you’re perfect,” Bucky manages. As soon as Bucky’s pulled out, as soon as he’s on the mattress next to Steve, Steve scrambles over to get closer, to share in that incredible afterglow, to take in his scent. He makes himself small, tucking his head against Bucky’s chest, and Bucky—perfect, incredible, goddamn _amazing,_ Bucky—wraps his big arms around Steve, holding him close. “Too fucking good to me, baby. You’re too fucking good.”

With the pitter of rain against the window, they lay there for a while, silently, contentedly, for what feels like a long, long time. Steve nearly dozes off, feeling so secure, so _safe,_ in Bucky’s arms, against the rhythmic rise and fall of Bucky’s thick chest. Bucky pets Steve’s hair, and Steve runs his fingers along the ridges of Bucky’s left arm, counting the scales, the edges, every single piece of that part of Bucky.

A clap of thunder rumbles through the apartment. Bucky looks up at the ceiling, a habit leftover from living in the old Barnes apartment, where the roofs would leak. “Looks like we’re rained in.”

Steve hums. “Can’t go for a run.”

“Can’t go to a museum, either,” Bucky murmurs, against Steve’s skin. “Subway waterfalls.”

“Guess that means we gotta stay in bed all day,” Steve says, feigning disappointment. He smiles up at Bucky, giving a cheeky little wink as he does so.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, shifting a little. “You ready to go again?”

Steve grins at Bucky, equal parts wolfish and full of near-religious adoration. “You kidding me? I could do this _all day._ ”

\---

Bucky sleeps in Steve’s bed that night, though the two of them don’t quite get much sleeping done. When Steve wakes up the next morning, it’s almost noon, and it’s to the noise of familiar voices in the kitchen. Somehow, Steve extricates himself from Bucky’s ironclad big-spoon grip, and he kisses Bucky on the temple, briefly, before slipping into a bathrobe to greet his brother and _his_ boyfriend.

A thought stops Steve, midway down the hallway. Could he call Bucky his boyfriend? Were they, officially?

He would ask, later, Steve decides. For now: he wanted breakfast.

“Hey,” Steve says, waving at Sam and Grant as he makes his way over to the kitchen.  

“Morning, asshole,” Grant says. He scans over Steve, before handing him a bag of still-warm bagels. “You’re up pretty late.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, adjusting his big, fluffy bathrobe, in a sad attempt to hide the many, many hickeys that Bucky left on him.

“You feeling alright?” Sam asks, furrowing his eyebrows. Grant goes to make Sam a cup of coffee, clearly watching his brother very, very carefully.

“Yeah, I, uh. I’m good,” Steve says, and maybe—just maybe—he could have gotten away with that. Maybe he could have shrugged it off as a weird mood, or sleeping poorly, or _something._

If it weren’t for Bucky coming into the kitchen, making last night’s events _clear as day,_ that is.

“ _There_ you are,” Bucky says, wiping his eyes, clearly still on the outer edge of sleepy, as he struts into the kitchen wearing nothing but his teeny-tiny red boxer briefs and the hickies Steve gave him in the early, early hours of that morning. He wraps his arms around Steve’s waist and pecks him on the cheek, before looking up at the other two people in the kitchen and smiling. “Morning, everyone. Hey, Grant. Sam.”

Steve looks away, knowing fully well that he’s broken out into a pink-faced, full-body blush.

“Holy shit,” Grant says, his eyes going wide. “So _that_ explains why I was in such a good mood last night, huh? Sam, remember? How I was in such a good mood last night? You know—”  

“Babe, _please, not in front of your brother,”_ Sam says, trying to hide his face, though he is _clearly_ blushing. Steve raises his eyebrows, shooting a look at his brother, and Grant waggles his own eyebrows, grinning.  

”What’s it that Nat calls it?” Grant asks, as he takes a sip of bagel-shop coffee. “Twinstincts? No, that’s not—oh, Twintuition!”

Sam looks horrified _._ He shoots a glance at Bucky, but Steve manages to catch it— _what have I gotten myself into._ Bucky, for what it’s worth, shrugs. 

“This is so fucked up. This is the _most_ fucked up,” Sam says, burying his face in his hands. “All of you get out of the kitchen, I need to make myself some tea and possibly a mixed drink. Barnes, you’d better be decent by the time I get to the living room.”

“No promises,” Bucky says, as Steve hands him the bag of bagels.

“Go! Get dressed! Cover yourself up! It’s a _federal holiday_!” Sam yells, and Bucky grins, padding over to his bedroom to do so, but not before stealing just one more kiss from Steve. Grant watches this whole thing, and smiles at his brother, before speaking, low, and in the little patois that was just their own.

\---

“ _So,”_ Grant says, “ _You finally told him how you feel? And it turned out well, I’m assuming?_ ”

Steve smiles, fondly. “ _Yeah, I guess. Don’t get an ego about it. You’re only right half the time, if that._ ”

Grant shrugs. “ _I mean, probably. But that’s why I’ve got you around, to be right for the other fifty-percent of times when I’m wrong.”_

“ _I guess,_ ” Steve says, rolling his eyes. They fall into a warm, friendly silence, and Steve can feel that it’s genuine, that it’s shared, that they’re both just so, so happy for each other. They don’t speak, because they don’t have to—because they know that, after everything, after a century’s worth of scrapping and fighting and hiding and suffering, they’re both contentedly, immeasurably _happy._

And the Rogers boys didn’t need words for that—Rogers-twin language or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's that. a happy ending, though, not much of an end or a goodbye. maybe. ( ;) )
> 
> last notes, for the road:  
> \- check out the [tumblr post for the last three chapters' art, by, again, the lovely katsukrumbs](https://katsukrumbs.tumblr.com/post/183398041457/duotype-blues-by-softpunkbucky-ao3-heres-the). and again, give them a nice reblog if you're still frequenting tumblr!!  
> \- i don't have a specific coffeeshop in mind that they visit, but in my heart of hearts, my first instinct is that it's [cafe grumpy](https://cafegrumpy.com/).  
> \- however, steve definitely gets his breakfast pastry from [the pret at penn station](https://www.pret.com/en-us/find-a-pret/penn%20station,%2034th%20st). that's where i got my breakfast the last day i was in new york city, i think.  
> \- all my buckies are always beefy. did i need to spend time writing this to say that? no. but i wanted to repeat it.  
> \- though it's the inspiration for the chapter summary, i want you to also imagine [st. vincent's "new york"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPqUvy1vYU) as the closing credits song of this fic. that's the vibe i'm getting.  
> \- and, finally, [here's the photoset that started it all](http://softpunkbucky.tumblr.com/post/181508468817/ckerouac-forchrisevans-golden-retriever), the images that made me think, a rogers twins au. twin steves. perfect."
> 
> thanks again to [katsukrumbs](https://katsukrumbs.tumblr.com/) for the fantastic art, thanks to my wonderful betas, and thanks to all of you for reading and gassing this project on. this was my first big bang, and it's been an incredible, sometimes-exhausting, always-intense experience. i hope to do more in the future (and in fact, i've signed up for the rbb), but again: thank you. all of you. this wouldn't have been possible without the amazing community that is the stevebucky fandom. <3


End file.
